Better Left Alone
by ashenfool
Summary: AH/AU, Canon Pairings. She fled from her past and entered college under a new identity,where she futilely resisted the friendship of Alice and Edward Cullen. But she can't hide forever, and the Cullens may soon realize that Bella Swan is better left alone
1. Chapter 1

Summary: When Alice Cullen goes to college, she is put in a room with the quiet Bella Swan, who has no interest whatsoever in friendship. However, Alice is persistent, and she and her brother Edward soon get sucked into Bella's mysterious life and her dark past, learning that maybe it would have been safer to let Bella push them away. All human, canon pairings.

So this is my first fanfiction ever—please be kind. The story will be told in various points of view. Expect a fairly slow start, setting the stage and introducing the characters. Canon couplings, but Bella's family situation is different. All will be revealed later. And I refuse to ever describe Alice as a pixie, as it is so obnoxiously overdone in fanfiction. Anyway, I obviously own none of the characters. The plot, however, is mine. Here we go!

Chapter 1: Alice

"Alice, stop bouncing," my brother snapped good naturedly as we waited for the elevator door to open.

"But I'm so excited! I hope she's cool—and that she doesn't listen to heavy metal and have guys over every night or something."

"Well, if she does, you know Emmett and I have a pull out couch at our apartment." The doors opened and we stepped back, letting the rush of stressed parents with empty suitcases exit the elevator.

"Yeah, Edward. Because living parttime in your brother's bachelor pad is just a dream come true for any eighteen year old girl. Unless of course you have hot friends over, at which point I'll not only take advantage of that couch, but I'll do it wearing my hot pajamas."

Edward laughed as he walked out into my hall, lugging two rolling suitcases behind him. I followed, holding computer case and purse in one hand while struggling to fish the dorm keys out with the other.

"Let's see…room 432…hold on, they're at the bottom of my purse—" The door to my room swung open, interrupting my purse-seaching.

"Um…I think you have the wrong room," a timid voice said. "This is a girls floor."

"Are you Isabella???" I exclaimed, pushing past my brother. "Hi, I'm Alice Cullen. This is my brother, Edward. He's just doing the heavy lifting, so I can focus on the closet organization. Oh my gosh you look exhausted!" Edward snorted at my rude observation, and I rammed my elbow into his rib. I practically bubbled with excitement. She _looked_ nice, anyway. Four inches taller than me, she was still small and thin, with translucently pale skin, dark hair and brown eyes with dark shadows underneath, making her look like she hadn't slept in two days. I assume it was excitement over moving in keeping her up. I felt like I had been on a caffeine high for a week.

"Ah, of course. Because arranging your shoe collection by color is much more difficult than lugging said shoe collection up three flights of stairs," Edward grumbled. "Nice to meet you," he told Isabella (that's a mouthful. Izzie, maybe?), as an afterthought.

"Oh, stop your whining, we used the elevator. Anyway, shouldn't you be making another trip to the car right now?? Where is Emmett? You are close to worthless. Bring me a real man!" Edward elbowed me as he chuckled and left the room. I threw myself onto what I assumed was my bed after dragging my bags all the way inside the room. "So, Isabella, where are you from?" I asked her.

"It's just Bella. Look, the room's small and you've got a lot of stuff. I'll clear out while you unpack." Bella stood and left the room without acknowledging or answering my question. I wondered briefly if I had offended her somehow before shrugging and standing up. _She's probably shy_, I thought, and decided I would work on that after I had fixed the more pressing problem at hand—the lack of closet space for my extensive clothes and shoe collection.

I took the time to survey my home for the next year. Two miniscule closets, a shared dresser and Bella's desk were along one wall. My desk and the door were along another, her bed on the third, and the fourth was empty. Maybe a futon could go there, I mused. Bella already had filled all of the shelves above her desk with stacks of paper back books. I wondered where she would put her textbooks.

"Where'd the other chick go?" Edward asked, walking back into my room.

"Oh, Edward, dear, how ever did you know how much we women _love_ it when guys refer to us as _chicks_??" I gushed, rolling my eyes. "I don't know. She left because it was crowded, I guess. Oh well, I wish she had stayed, but I have all year to get to know her. Plus, I can research now."

"Research?" my brother queried. I answered him by shoving my box of bedding in his arms. "Make yourself useful," I ordered. I threw Bella's closet door open.

"Ah…Spying. Now I understand. Yes, how kind of her to leave so you can invade her privacy."

"Shut it. Good Lord, how does this child survive? Jeans, t-shirts, converse shoes, and a few moderately attractive blouses. And by a few, I mean two. I love a good project."

"And on that note, I am going to get the rest of your things. I fear for the girl already. Five minutes after you've met, you are already planning on taking over her life, starting with the wardrobe."

"_Edward_, I'm merely being philanthropic. I see someone in need and I help them, just like Mom and Dad raised us to do," I said, already planning which of my clothes Bella would be wearing to class. Deep colors, definitely, with that skin. Blues and reds, maybe. My longer dresses, since she had four inches on me, and my tunics would fit her like shirts. I barely noticed Edward leaving the room.

By the time Edward came back in the room with the last of my suitcases, I had read the titles of Bella's books and was looking at her pictures. She didn't have many. There was one of her and a woman to whom she bore a striking resemblance. I assumed it was her mother. There was also one of her holding a baseball bat out like she was afraid it would bite her while an attractive older man laughed in the background. The last was of Bella with a tall, beautiful man. Bella was wearing boxing gloves, and was laughing as she punched the blonde in the gut. There was a note scribbled on the bottom of this picture. _Don't forget your exercises. Love, J._ I wondered who _J_ was. A boyfriend, maybe? I would have to congratulate her. The man looked like a god.

"How's the stalking going?" Edward inquired. "That's the last of your crap, by the way. Except your purse collection, which is still at my apartment. You _will_ move that out tomorrow, by the way.

"Fine, fine," I said airily. "Personally I think your apartment needs that feminine touch, but if you aren't man enough to keep a few Coaches and Chanels, who am I to argue? And I am not stalking, I am _investigating_."

Edward grinned. "Ah, of course. How foolish of me. Anyway, Emmert and I are having a party tomorrow night, so your purses need to be out before then. Invite your roommate, if she wants to come."

"Ooh, good. So will I finally get to meet Rosalie? The fabulous Rosalie who has somehow managed to take Emmett off the market? And is _that_ why you are so touchy about the purses? Planning on bringing a lady to your bedroom tomorrow night, hmmm, Eddie?"

"No, Alice, dear, but people will go to my room to put their shit down. Plus, a lot of the alcohol is stored in there. And yes, you will finally get to meet Rosalie. The woman is absolutely terrifying, but somehow I think you will get along just fine."

I frowned at that. Emmett had been like a second older brother to me ever since he and Edward had begun their ridiculous bromance, and I was very protective of him. I had seen pictures, and I knew Rosalie was gorgeous, but I didn't know anything else about her. I supposed she must be spectacular. Emmett was never the settling type. All the same though, I was a little jealous that I apparently was no longer the number one woman in his life.

Edward frowned at me, reading my facial expressions correctly. He was already disgustingly perceptive, and he and I were extremely close. "Come on Al, Emmett still loves you. I actually think he's concerned that once you meet Rose you'll be ditching him to hang out with her."

I smiled. Edward was truly my protector. He could always tell exactly what I was thinking and what I needed to hear to make me feel better. I was so glad to finally be joining him at college.

So, end of chapter one. Leave me a review.


	2. Chapter 2

Second Chapter! Still own nothing, still wish I did.

Chapter Two: Bella

I made a hasty exit, getting out the room before the conversation turned personal. Alice was going to be difficult already, I could tell. She seemed perfectly nice, and I'm sure in a different world we could have been friends, but the way things were…

I was shocked when I opened the door and found a beautiful bronze haired boy standing outside my room. I had been mentally preparing myself for the worst, for a girl with a unibrow or perhaps body odor. While I might not be able to be friends with my roommate, I wanted living with her to be tolerable. I was not expecting a five foot tall pipsqueak, who I couldn't even see around her gorgeous brother. I wondered briefly if he was just helping her move in lieu of their parents and then going elsewhere, or if he was also a student here. He looked a couple years older. Alice, on the other hand, could have passed for a freshman in high school as easily as a freshman in college, she was so small. She gave the phrase "bright eyed and bushy tailed" a whole new meaning.

I shook my head, clearing my thoughts away. _It doesn't matter, Bella_, I reminded myself. _Get your degree. Friends are not part of the plan_.

I supposed I was fortunate. I was always shy and old my age, never quite fitting in anywhere. I never had too many friends, so I didn't anticipate any problems with my self-imposed seclusion. This would be a lot harder if I had been the gregarious popular type in high school. But I was always different, and now I had just been through too much.

I continued wandering around campus, mentally marking where all of buildings I had classes in were. Parents were everywhere, helping their children move in. I felt a brief pang of sadness before I brushed it away. _Wallowing gets you nowhere!_ In one lawn, a group of guys were playing Ultimate Frisbee. I flinched as a guy got tackled to the ground for the sake of a piece of orange plastic, before I tripped and remembered why exactly it was that I didn't do any heavy thinking while I was in motion. My clumsiness may have gotten better, thanks to Jasper, but I still needed all my faculties about me when I was doing intense physical activity. Like playing sports. Or running. Or standing perfectly still.

My thoughts wandered back to Alice. I sighed, knowing I was probably going to hurt her feelings. She seemed like someone who was not used to being disliked. And I didn't dislike her, but she would probably take it that way when I refused her advances at friendship, and any invitations to eat, watch movies, or other acceptable roommate bonding activities. I started preparing excuses about how I had heard that it was wiser not to be best friends with your roommate because you already spend so much time together. I truly had been given this piece of advice, but even if I hadn't, recent circumstances had forced me to learn how to lie much more effectively. I don't stutter quite so much, I've conquered the tell-tale lip biting habit, and most impressively, I have somewhat tamed the Blush. And I do mean the Blush. It is so pervasive and so obvious and persistent that it deserves a capital letter.

I comforted myself knowing that Alice would soon be distracted by a new college social life. If her brother was a student here, she probably already knew people. Even if she didn't, beautiful people like her never seem to have too much trouble fitting in. With her stylish short haircut, flawless skin, and the same vivid green eyes as her brother, combined with an energetic and ebullient personality, I had no doubt that before long, she would be spending far more time out with friends than in our room with me anyway.

I snapped out of my daze just in time to see the Frisbee headed straight for me. Too late for me to move, it bounced off my shoulder.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" a blonde guy (sophomore, maybe?) panted as he ran up. "I should have caught that. Tyler, nice throw asshole! Way to almost knock out a hot freshman on move in day!" His friend laughed and yelled an apology to me even as I cringed away from the attention.

The blonde turned to me again. "Sorry again about that. I'm Mike Newton. And you are?"

"Bella Swan," I muttered, still not used to using that name. "Is it that obvious I'm a freshman?"

Mike laughed. "You look pretty overwhelmed. It's a common freshman facial expression. Were you looking for anything in particular?"

I wasn't, but I wanted out of this conversation and fast. "Yeah, I'm looking for the gym, actually. Can you point me in the right direction?"

Mike tossed the Frisbee back in the game before turning and starting to point me in the right direction. "Starting early, Mike?" one of his friends called. "Normally you wait until the semester opens to harass the new girls!"

Mike grimaced. "Ignore him, please. Anyway, you think you can find, or do you want me to walk with you?"

"No, no," I hurriedly assured him. I can find it on my own."

"Well, then, Bella Swan," he said, taking my hand in his and, no lie, kissing my knuckles. Did this guy think he was charming??? "I hope to see you around campus."

"Um, yeah, me too." I forced the words out, turning and walking as fast as I could without tripping in the direction he pointed. As I walked, I realized I really did want to go to the gym. Since I was already dressed for it and sweaty from moving in, I decided to go explore.

It took me about eight minutes to walk to the gym. Since people were still moving in, it was pretty empty. I asked the girl checking student IDs if they had a punching bag. She told me where to go and where to check out gloves.

I got my gloves and walked into a small dingy room with three bags hanging. It was empty, which pleased me. I settled down into the crouch Jasper taught me, and began the motions I had done a hundred times. For the first time since arriving, a calm swept over me, and I was, if not happy, at peace.

End Chapter Two! Leave me a review!


	3. Chapter 3

Hello, all. So, here is chapter three. I still don't own the characters.

Chapter Three: Edward

I plopped down on our couch and put my feet up on the coffee table, turning the television on. Class hadn't started, I had no homework, the alcohol was purchased, people weren't coming over for another hour or so, and I was bored as hell. Alice had just come and gone, getting her godforsaken purses out of my room, which was a relief, except now I was hanging out alone again.

BANG! Never mind. Emmett had entered the room with all of his usual grace, throwing the door open so hard that it hit the wall and made the whole room rattle. Once upon a time, that would have startled me, but hanging out with Emmett, you get used to his approaching everything with a certain amount of…momentum, shall we say?

"Hey, man. You sleep over at Rose's last night?" I asked him. I hadn't seen Emmett since noon the day before.

"Yeah. Hey, if you're looking for something to watch, I think Wyoming's playing. They have a pretty good team this year." He came and sat on the other end of the couch, taking the remote and changing the channel. "Did you get Alice all moved in?"

"Yeah. Well, I got her stuff to her room anyway. No way was I staying for the unpacking process. I would have killed her in an hour."

Emmett chuckled. We were convinced Alice had a mild case of OCD, and heaven help the person that messed with her organization.

"Did you meet her roommate?"

"Yeah. Seemed pretty quiet. Said two words and then skipped out so we would have more room to spread out and unpack."

"I ask if you met her roommate and you tell me quiet. More importantly, is she hot?"

I rolled my eyes. Some things, girlfriend or no girlfriend, never change. "You are a Neanderthal, I hope you realize that. She's pretty enough, in a girl-next-door sort of way. Nothing on Rose." Then again, Rose was, outwardly at least, the most beautiful person I've ever met. Too high maintenance for me, but perfect for Emmett.

"You like the girl next door look…"

I grinned. Ever since Emmett and Rose started hooking up, he had been trying to find me a girl. I think he felt guilty about either leaving me alone all the time or making me a third wheel in my own apartment (which admittedly _was_ uncomfortable at times).

"Thanks, Yente. But I think I'll avoid pissing off my baby sister by maybe _not_ hooking up with her roommate."

We heard a sharp rap on the door before Alice, in typical Alice style, came in half a second later and scolded us for taking too long to get to the door.

"Emmett!!" she exclaimed, flinging herself across the room and into Emmett's, who had barely stood up from the couch, arms. He grunted and fell back onto the couch, taking Alice with him. "Oh, whatever, you big baby. You're huge and I'm tiny, and if you can't handle _my_ weight, I have no clue what you do with Ms. Tall, Blonde, and Curvy."

"Alice, as long as you_ keep_ having no clue what he does with Tall, Blonde, and Curvy, I will be a very happy older brother. What are you doing here, by the way? People aren't coming over for another hour."

"Well, Bella left the room all day _again_, and I got tired of waiting for her to come back. She told me that she was staying in tonight, but I'm hoping she'll change her mind. So I left her note telling her to call me if she wanted to come and giving her your address and decided to come on over and make sure you guys are adequately prepared for this party." She heaved herself up and off of Emmett and walked into the kitchen area, rearranging or adjusting everything she touched.

"Thanks, Mom. I'm so glad you're here to help us poor fools out" Emmett said, smiling.

"Hmph. You poke fun, but the two of you _are_ clueless boys. You'll thank me when none of your guests come complaining about how you've run out of toilet paper in the bathroom because you didn't think to leave out extra."

Emmett and I traded glances. She was right. We had forgotten to put out toilet paper. "Alright Al, free reign. Wait, no, bad idea. Limited reign. But still, make our apartment party ready. But college party ready, not huge charity gala for the wealthy ready."

She finished doing whatever she was doing in the kitchen and sat herself down on the couch between the two of us.

"So, Fat Al," Emmett began. "Tell me about your roommate. Think she should hook up with your brother here?"

Alice frowned. "That could be awkward. Especially when Edward screws it up, as he's bound to do—" she ignored my protests, "—and I am stuck living with her and trying not to take sides. Plus, I've heard her say about two sentences, so I have no clue what she's like. For all I know, she's not good enough for Edward. Or, equally likely, she's entirely _too_ good for him."

"Hey!" I exclaimed. "How about some familial support here! Personally, I think I'm a pretty good catch. Pre-med, devastating good looks…"

"An ego the size of the Pacific?" Alice finished sweetly.

"Thanks, brat. But I'll have to pass on the roommate, I think. She goes by Bella? I prefer girls who actually speak."

"Oh, don't be an ass. I think she's just shy. That'll change once she gets to know me."

"Yeah." Emmett chuckled. "Because Fat Al will beat the words out of her if she has to." Sad, but true. Once my sister decides to make friends with someone, resistance is futile. Bella Swan was already doomed.

"Anyway, I hope she decides to come tonight. I don't know if she has a car, so I'm not going to drink so I can go pick her up if she needs me to. This will be small enough that she hopefully won't be overwhelmed, but she needs to start meeting people," Alice continued.

"Um, Al? Has it occurred to you that she might be meeting people without your help? She was quiet, yes, but normal looking enough that I doubt she's a social leper."

"Shut up, I don't think she's a leper. She's a project, not a pariah. I'm sure she'll make plenty of friends on her own, but I would like her to know you guys as well so it isn' t awkward if y'all come visit."

"Sure thing, Al," Emmett responded, standing and stretching. He ambled into the kitchen and got a beer out of the fridge. "But just so you're aware, you come visit us, we don't come visit you. I am not squishing into a miniscule freshman dorm when I have a whole apartment."

"Yeah, yeah, you're big juniors that are too cool to hang out with the annoying younger sister. I get it."

I rolled my eyes. Alice could be obnoxiously melodramatically when she wanted to be. "Oh, Al, you know I adore you. Until you start interfering with my dating life."

"Oh, no worries about me. I'm in college now. I'll be focusing on my _own_ dating life." I smiled. Some older brothers might have been concerned about that. But Alice could handle herself. I was more concerned about her future conquests. Any man that could put up with her energy probably deserved her. Plus, I knew Emmett would do behind the scenes work, protecting her from the truly horrendous.

The doorbell rang, and Alice jumped up to answer it. Half an hour, and she's already taking over my apartment. I smiled fondly. I missed my little sister more than I cared to admit.

Please, review!


	4. Chapter 4

A/N: Okay! So this chapter is shorter than the others, but it's pretty important. There's a complete change of setting, and you get a little insight into Bella's past.

Chapter Four: Detective Jasper Whitlock

Detective Whitlock crossed his legs, stretching them propped up on his desk as he leaned back in his chair, surveying his new office. He congratulated himself on his promotion. He had displayed such aptitude in his career path, such good instincts and people skills, that he had been promoted to fulltime Detective with his own assistant and office only sixteen months after he received his degree in Criminal Justice from Syracuse. He allowed himself a few moments of conceit before he got back to work.

The Marie Dywer case. Whitlock scowled. His work should have been done eight months ago. They had the name of the perp, but somehow he managed to keep evading law enforcement. The situation got so bad that they restricted the details of the case to only Whitlock and his direct superior, Senior Detective Clearwater, to avoid risking a leak.

_I wonder how Marie is_, Whitlock wondered. _No, it's Bella. She goes by Bella now._ James Layton had proven his mettle to the PD, to the destruction of the Dwyer family. Marie was officially dead. Renee and Phil could not know where or how she was until Layton was either dead or incarcerated. And somewhere, Chief Charles Swan had gained a daughter.

That was a stroke of luck, really. Marie's need to disappear coincided with the week that Chief Swan, one of Clearwater's college buddies, got transferred from a tiny town in South Dakota to a much larger city. A city where no one would know that his daughter hadn't always been his daughter, so no one would question why Chief Swan would adopt a seventeen-year old. And just like that, Marie Dwyer was dead, and Bella Swan had a father who could protect her. Jasper shuddered, remembering what the Dwyers had been through, what Marie had seen and Renee had suffered, before turning his eyes back to the report in front of him. No one deserved it less. Jasper and Marie had gotten very close, and he knew her to be a sweet and genuine girl. He took a personal interest in her safety, teaching her how to defend herself with the best of them.

"Detective Whitlock?" his assistant asked, poking his head into Jasper's office. Emily was a small woman that packed a serious punch. Dangerously focused and eager to please, she would one day be a terror to criminals everywhere. "Clearwater wants you in his office, sir."

"Thanks, Em," Jasper responded, tossing the report on his desk before ambling to the door. He looked forward to his meetings with Clearwater. Harry Clearwater had at once resented Jasper, regarding him as a young upstart who had gotten ahead so fast through dumb luck and reckless chance taking. After working together over the last nine months on the Dwyer/Layton case, Clearwater had come to value Jasper's work ethic as well as his ability to talk to suspects and witnesses alike. No one else could lure a suspect into a false sense of security, or coax details out of unwilling witnesses quite like Jasper could. He had charisma in spades. It was Clearwater who both recommended and approved Jasper's recent promotion.

"Whitlock," Clearwater grunted, as Jasper walked into his office. "Take a seat. I'll just be a minute." He didn't look up from where he was scribbling on a piece of paper. Jasper waited, knowing Clearwater's tactics. They may work well together and respect each other, but Clearwater would still deliberately keep Jasper waiting to prevent him from getting too big for his britches. Jasper Whitlock may be a prodigy, but Clearwater kept him aware of the fact that he was a twenty-three year old kid.

A minute later, Clearwater scrawled an illegible signature and looked up. "Someone hacked into the computer system at Jefferson High School."

"On Camelback?" Jasper asked. This wasn't normally the kind of case that he got assigned. "Do we have any suspects or potential motives, other than idiot kids wanting to mess with their exam grades?"

"No." Clearwater's eyes locked on Jasper's. "Not Jefferson on Camelback. Jefferson in Elk Point, South Dakota."

"_Shit_," Jasper breathed, eyes wide. Elk Point, South Dakota was where Charlie Swan lived before his transfer. "So someone knows—"

"—someone knows that Charlie Swan did not have a daughter before his move."

Jasper swore fluently. Clearwater continued. "The break-in was done on site, so we are watching all the flights from the surrounding area. I'm assuming that Layton knows what name Dwyer is using now. However, there's no way he knows where she's in college. Charlie would know better than to tell anyone the right college."

"So what do you want me to do?" Jasper asked.

Clearwater stood, throwing a folder across his desk onto Jasper's lap. "You're taking a trip."

Okay! Hope you enjoyed this one! Please, leave me a review, let me know what you think. My page is showing me a lot of hits, so I know a lot of you are reading, but I really want feedback! The next chapter will be longer, and it will be back to the gang at college.


	5. Chapter 5

Alright, we've skipped ahead in the school year some. What we skipped will be revealed through memories and reflection later in the story. Hope you enjoyed Jasper's chapter, and you'll find out more about that and Bella's past in six chapters or so. I own nothing, and I worship at Stephanie Meyer's feet.

Chapter Five: Rosalie

_Two months later_:

"I HATE her!" My bedroom door slammed, and Alice Cullen stomped in, eyes flashing. I glanced up at her from my LSAT prep book, languidly raising an eyebrow, while internally, my heart pounded from surprise.

"You knocked?" I asked, my voice dripping with honey.

"UGH!" Alice collapsed on my bed next to me, facedown.

"Roommate problems?" I asked, amused by my friend's theatrics.

"God," Alice said, propping up her torso with her elbows crossed in front of her. "It's not like she's mean, or inconsiderate. She's not. She just wants absolutely nothing to do me. I try. I really do. I've invited her shopping, to eat with me, to parties. I ask her how classes are going. And what do I get? Lame ass excuses and one word answers! So I think 'Okay, she's shy and possibly socially awkward.' And if that were the case I could help her! I would be her friend! But it turns out, she does have friends! I saw her out at lunch with some really gorgeous, tall Indian hunk! And they were laughing and having a grand ole time. So, I have concluded that she simply doesn't like me, and I have no idea WHY." She finished her last sentence with a wail before collapsing back onto the mattress.

I chuckled. It was hard to believe that I had once been jealous of Alice. Before I met her, I was worried about what would happen when the girl Emmett spoke about with such fondness actually arrived. I knew that if she didn't approve of me, she would be more than able to drive a wedge between Emmet and me. I also wasn't quite convinced that their relationship was entirely platonic. But once she arrived, I quickly realized how ridiculous all of that was. The minute I walked into Emmett and Edward's apartment, I was tackled by five feet of pale skin and dark hair squealing about how excited she was to meet me. I never once felt judged, and it was easy to see from Emmett and Alice's interaction how brotherly and sisterly their relationship was. Since then, we had become extremely close friends. Her brother drove me nuts more often than not, but Alice and I understood each other.

"So maybe her excuses are legitimate? I mean, yeah, she should hang out with you occasionally, it's possible she thinks that since the two of you live together that she should hang out with you when you are in the dorm and her other friends outside the dorm."

"Which would make sense, if she would talk to me when we were in the room. But she makes no effort to get to know me, and refuses to let me get to know her. After _two months_, all I know about her is that she loves to read and she's a double major in English Lit and Business. "

"Hmm. Maybe she's in an abusive relationship. You know, the kind where the guy is really controlling and won't let her have any friends, so she won't talk to you in case he doesn't approve. He's cutting off her resources so she doesn't have anyone to turn to except for him. Maybe it's the hot Indian." As I spoke, Alice curled around so her head was in my lap and she reached up and started playing with my hair.

"No, I don't think so. They looked like they were just really close friends. She comes home with bruises some, but I think she boxes. There's a picture of her wearing boxing gloves on her desk, and half the time she's wearing gym clothes and really sweaty."

"Ew," I said. "Alright then, you've convinced me. She hates you. Now what did you do? Tie her down and give her a manicure against her will? Leave your socks on her side of the room? Kill her puppy? OW!" I exclaimed when Alice yanked on my hair after that last suggestion.

"Look, Alice, it sounds like she's just a bitch. See if you can get a new roommate next semester. Unless you don't mind that much, because it sounds like she's easy to live with. Quiet, neat, doesn't listen to obnoxious music or have people over all the time, anyway."

Alice sighed. I looked at her. Her mood had changed from angry to sad. "I just don't understand why she doesn't like me. I've been nice to her. I haven't been an obnoxious roommate, and I ask her before I have anyone over. I just wish I knew why she has such a huge aversion to being my friend."

"Well, have you asked her? You could explode at her instead of at me. You know, confront the source of the problem and all that jazz."

"My mom says that maybe she has stuff going on in her life that I don't understand, and that I shouldn't take it personally. Of course, then she followed that up with the Mom answer to everything, which is 'Oh honey, she might be jealous of you or intimidated by you because you're so beautiful and smart and so on and so forth.'" Alice rolled her eyes. "Because I am super intimidating."

"Uh, Alice, honey, I've been shopping with you . I hate to break it to you, but you _can_ be rather intimidating."

Alice sniffed, nose in the air. "Well, Bella has not. So unless she is intimidated by my terrifying lack of size, that isn't the problem."

I closed my book and got off my bed. "Alright, then. Up you go, Alice. One of Emmett's friends from the football team is having a house party, and we are going to put on our pretty clothes and six inch heels and give all the other girls something to be jealous of. No more moping! While Bella's in the library reading Shakespeare, you can be having a good time and flirting with jocks."

"You strike a hard bargain, Rosalie," Alice said, pulling into a sitting position. "But I suppose I can abandon my doom and gloom for a few short hours to support the athletes. Will I know anyone there?"

"I'm pretty sure your brother will be there, actually, and of course Emmett and me. And didn't you mention having a class with Eric Yorkie?"

"WHAT? No way is Eric Yorkie on the football team! He's so tiny and geeky!"

"He's an amazing kicker, apparently. Good thing, too, because from what I understand, it's the only way he manages to meet girls."

And laughing and gossiping, we began getting ready for the night.

Okay, so two chapters in one night today. This probably won't happen again. I'm getting busy with school, so my guess is that the rate of updates will decrease to once a week or so. HOWEVER, I could be persuaded to write a little faster by reviews…


	6. Chapter 6

So this is my longest chapter yet. I would like to preface this chapter by saying that this is going to be a Bella/Edward fic, not a Bella/Jake. However, I just couldn't leave him out of my story. I meant to just give him a small part, but he took away my pen and wrote his own story. It's another very reflective chapter, but this one has more dialogue. Anyway, I still don't own any of the characters.

Chapter Six: Jacob

"Hey!" Bella said, dropping her books on the table and collapsing onto a chair. "Sorry I'm late. Harding wanted to talk about my paper." She eyed my food. "Get started without me, Jake? Geez, thanks."

"Yeah, well I figured I could go ahead and eat a plate and have my second plate with you. That way I can actually eat enough food without having to eat twice as fast and not being able to talk to you," I responded easily, tossing a French fry at her face. She tried to swat it away, blinking as she missed completely and it hit her in the face. I laughed.

"So what did Harding have to say?"

"Oh, the usual. Excellent ideas and imagery, poor sentence variation and organization. Loves my thoughts, but not my presentation."

"Funny. You never seem to have the slightest bit of trouble expressing exactly what you think." I waggled my eyebrows at her, laughing as she blushed.

"Well, if you weren't such a condescending _ass—_" I cut her off by sticking another French fry in her mouth, and flagged down the waiter before she swallowed. I learned fast that it was better to stop her before she got started.

"I've never had any complaints about your _presentation_, eithe—" I jumped out of my seat, tripping, as Bella grabbed a ketchup packet and launched it at me. It sailed through where my head had been and hit the person behind me, who turned around with an exclamation. I burst out laughing.

"_Holy crow_! I am _so_ sorry!" Bella began to say. He shook his head and laughed.

Bella looked at me, her face bright red. "No harm done, Fire Engine Bells. That was a _spectacular_ throw, though you need to learn to adjust for receiver travel."

"Shut up," she muttered, still blushing and obviously mortified.

I chuckled. Bella's temper tantrums never failed to make me laugh.

_I walked down the steps to take over Kristen's shift. "Hey Kris. Busy day, huh?"_

_She laughed. The semester hadn't started yet, and the gym was completely empty. "I actually did just rent some boxing gloves to a girl that probably weighs ninety pounds. She probably watched too much Buffy and is dislocating her shoulders and spraining her wrists on a bag right now."_

"_Ha, alright. I'll go check on her. Go home." I walked into the room, a converted squash court, expecting to find a girl taking out all her girly anger at a boyfriend out on a punching bag. I was surprised to find a small brunette kicking the shit out a bag. A small brunette who knew what the hell she was doing._

"_You know—" She jumped and paused for a second, before continuing. She didn't turn around or give any other indication that she heard me. "Your form is pretty good, but you need to lower your left shoulder some. Also, roundhouse kicks on a bag that heavy are a bad idea. You need something with less weight and more give."_

_She still didn't acknowledge my presence, but she did drop her left shoulder. I walked around the side of the bag, circling both of them. "You should also watch the way the ball of your opposite foot curls under when you punch."_

_She glared at me, still punching the bag. Damn, I thought. Sweatsoaked and redcheeked, the girl was beautiful. "Well, thanks—" Whack! "--, but I don't remember asking you." Beautiful and temperamental._

"_Oh, no problem. I offer my services for free. Well, actually for six fifty an hour. I work at the gym. I'm Jacob Black."_

_She looked at me with a raised brow. "Okay." She turned back toward the bag without giving me another glance or her name. _

"_Now," I walked over to the bag, holding it still. "Traditionally, at this point, you would respond by telling me your name." She didn't respond, simply walking over to another bag. _

_I followed. I should have left her alone, but now I was intrigued. Cleaned up, she would probably be the innocent and wholesome girl next door, but with a ponytail and gym clothes, covered in sweat, she was incredible. I wanted to know her. I grabbed onto her new bag. "Or, you can continue to—"_

"_WHAT is your PROBLEM??" She punched the stationary bag one more time before turning to me and landing one on my chest. I let out a huge whoosh of air, stumbling back a bit in surprise. The girl had a _mean_ punch. I would want her on my side in a fight, no problem._

"_Oh my gosh!" She gasped, bringing her hands to cover her mouth before realizing that she was still wearing the gloves. "I am _so_ sorry. I cannot believe I just did that, I was just concentrating, and you made me lose my focus, and then my temper, and I totally overre—"_

_I cut her off. "How about you pay me back by telling me your name?"_

"_Bella Swan."_

"_Well, Bella Swan, I will forgive you on one condition."_

"_Yes?" she asked, instantly wary._

"_You will let me buy you coffee tomorrow afternoon." _

"_Not a good idea. I'm not the kind of friend you want. I mean, I just punched you for Chrissake."_

"_Which, weirdly enough, makes you exactly the kind of friend I want to have. It's coffee, not a proposal."_

"_Okay, one coffee, and that's it. This is not a friendship, this is an apology."_

"_I can live with that. See you tomorrow at three, Bella Swan."_

Of course, it wasn't just one coffee. She showed up at 3:02, and asked about my day. From there, the conversation just _flowed_. I was surprised at how easy she was to talk to. We simply relaxed into each other's presence. Two hours later, the baristas were changing shifts, and we both realized how much time had passed. Bella jumped up and made her excuses, telling me that it had been surprisingly fun, but she had to be going. When I asked her if she wanted to hang out later, she told me no. I shrugged, and let her leave, hiding my disappointment.

But the next day, when I went for my shift at the gym, she was there, beating the crap out of a punching bag. So I went to talk to her again. If she really wanted to avoid me, there were other gyms on campus. And so I started coming to my shifts half an hour early so I could talk to her while we worked out with our respective bags.

"_Look, it's not personal, Jake. I'm just not a good friend for you to have."_

"_I think I can decide what kind of friends I want to have, thank you."_

"_No. You don't understand. It's not _safe_ to be friends with me." I paused. What did that even mean?_

"_Bella, I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, but really, I can handle myself. I'm six foot seven and I haven't lost a fight since seventh grade."_

Bella continued to protest over the next couple of weeks, but I wore her down. We became friends over those weeks without her realizing, without her noticing that our talking everyday for half an hour had progressed into an easy and natural friendship. Once she realized that she already was my friend, she stopped trying to fight, giving me one last cryptic warning:

"_You have no idea what you're getting yourself into, and you won't be able to say that I didn't warn you. If you want to be friends with me, you're going to have to start sleeping with one eye open."_

I laughed her off at the time, not understanding what she meant. It wasn't until a month later that I met Chief Swan and he and Bella finally told me what was going on. She expected me to run, I think, to finally listen to her warnings and find safer people to be with, that wouldn't put me in danger by knowing me. But by then I was beyond hooked. Bella and I had become best friends, as close as you could be with such a huge secret hanging between you anyway. She knew about how I worried about leaving my chairbound father home alone. I knew that no matter how jaded she pretended to be, she was still a hopeless romantic. She made me read Shakespeare, and I repaired her dilapidated truck. She taught me how to cook, and I think I kept the shadows that I didn't understand from overtaking her life. I teased her when she tripped over nothing, and she smacked me when I flirted. There was no way I was going to leave her on her own. If anything, she had additional protection from me. I could take care of myself.

I wanted to rid her world of darkness and shadows. She had demons in her past that no one should have to deal with. I wanted her to be safe and happy, and I wanted her to be able to celebrate Christmas with her family. I wanted more for her, and I wanted her for me. I think she may have had feelings for me as well, but I knew that as long as the shadows were hanging over, as long as she felt she was fated to die, that she would never enter into a relationship with anyone. She felt like she was dragging me down just by being friends with me. I hated that she held herself back from getting attached. Every time her midget roommate wanted to hang out, every time she hurt her feelings by refusing, I could see her guilt. Bella was a nice, good person, and it killed her to hurt Alice, but she told me she would rather be hated than put people in danger.

I had hope for us, though. When I first met her, she was so _twitchy_, always holding herself around the middle like she needed her arms to hold her insides in, always looking over her shoulder as if expecting someone to be following her. Two months ago, her eyes were dead. Now, she wasn't always looking over one shoulder, the bags under her eyes were almost nonexistent, like she had started sleeping for the first time in a year, and she didn't act like she constantly nervous that someone was going to attack her. Even now, she sat across from me at lunch, trying to explain to me why the BBC version of _Pride and Prejudice_ was infinitely superior to the newer one with Keira Knightley. I couldn't care less, but her eyes sparkled when she argued passionately about something.

I wanted to show her a world with no darkness, where her biggest worry was her next midterm. I wanted to meet her biological parents, to know the people who had created Bella Swan. I wanted her to be able to accept her roommate's lunch invitation without fearing that she was bringing the forces of hell upon her. But in a world with darkness, a world where she the devil at her feet, I would be happy to take her in my arms and keep her safe with me.

End Chapter.

For those of you that have been anxiously awaiting some Edward/Bella interaction, it will be here next chapter! However, the next chapter isn't coming unless this story starts getting more reviews. Now that the plot has started to move, the stories are going to get longer and more involved, and I need feedback! I don't want to spend a lot of time on this if no one cares that much.


	7. Chapter 7

So apparently there was some confusion over the last chapter, and a couple people thought Bella was having lunch with Edward. I checked the story in case I had by accident typed Edward's name in a couple places instead of Jacob's, but I couldn't find any. Clarification: Bella is friends with Jacob—this is the same lunch referenced in Chapter Five where Alice saw her laughing with an Indian. Bella has only spoken to Edward once, when he came to help Alice move in. Edward certainly would not be friends on the sly with the girl that is hurting his little sister's feelings. But no worries! Your Edward/Bella interaction is here!! Warning: This chapter does have some bad language in it, but it isn't excessive, and the situation demands it. Don't hate. I still don't own anything Twilight.

Chapter Seven: Edward

I raised both of my hands over my head so I could squeeze between the counter and a girl without spilling the beers I had just filled.

"Double fisting already, Edward?" Tanya asked. "Must have been a rough week."

"No, Tanya," I told her patiently. I made out with Tanya once last semester, and she kept persistently approaching me about a repeat. "Have you_ seen_ the crowd around the keg? I am merely taking evasive actions so that I won't have to brave the drunken coeds for my next drink fix."

"Edward!" I looked up and saw Rosalie making her way toward me. "Hey, did you come with Emmett? I just got here but I haven't seen him yet." She squeezed between two football players, ignoring the suggestive looks they shot her, and promptly took one of my beers out of my hand.

"Thanks, Rose," I said dryly.

"Oh, please. As if your overdeveloped sense of chivalry wouldn't have forced an offer to get me drink out of you in about T minus ten seconds anyway. I got challenged to a beer pong game when I walked in. Partner?"

"Naturally." Rosalie and I argued often, but we were hell to face in a beer pong match. We both had great arms, and she was an expert at distraction. Right when our opponent would go to shoot, she would subtly twist in such a way to display her cleavage to its best advantage. We rarely lost. "So did you come by yourself, then? Emmett said you were going to meet us here rather than at our place."

"Actually, I came with Alice. She burst into my room a couple hours ago wailing about her roommate. I invited her hoping that between dressing up and having a few beers she would cheer up some." My smile fell. For Alice to complain to Rose, she must have been upset. I knew her roommate situation bothered her more than she let on, but it was difficult to upset Alice to the point where she would express it out loud. My happy little sister possessed an infectious and unfailing optimism.

"So where is Teeny Mac, anyway?" I asked, using my old nickname for Alice.

"Um, she saw some girl she knew that I think lives on her floor and went to talk to her. Jessica, I think?"

"Ah," I shrugged. They couldn't be too close. I had never heard Alice mention a girl named Jessica.

"Hey Rose! Ed! Y'all are up next!" That was Eli, a junior running back from Georgia. He liked to flirt wildly with Rose, trying to get a reaction out of Emmett. It never worked. Emmett and Rosalie were extremely secure in their relationship, and he knew he had nothing to worry about, even when Rosalie flirted back. Rosalie was extremely aware of her own sexuality and attractiveness, and she used it to her advantage.

"My lady?" I gave Rose a silly little courtly bow and offered her my arm. She dropped an equally ridiculous curtsy and placed her hand that was not holding her beer in the crook of my elbow. We made our way over to the table. "Alright, Eli, Jason. Prepared for slaughter?"

"Ha! Prepared to slaughter _you_. Winner gets a kiss, how 'bout it, Rosie?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively at my partner.

"No, thanks. Rose can kiss you, Eli, but Edward's lips are not coming anywhere near mine." Jason shuddered in mock disgust.

As we started playing, Emmett arrived at the table, leading a cheering section for us. Halfway through the game, one of the football cheerleaders pulled him away from the game and started talking to him quickly. He shot me a panicked look and followed her off. I wondered briefly what was going on, but turned back to the game.

Two turns later, the same cheerleader came up to Rose and me. "Edward?"

"Yes. And you are?"

"Avery-Anne. I'm a friend of Emmett's. Um, Emmett says the tiny little brunette girl that he hangs out with a bunch is your little sister?"

"Rose, shoot for me." I abandoned the game, giving the girl my full attention. I could see Rose listening in as she shot for both of us, her aim not suffering for her inattention. "What's the problem?"

"She was talking to my friend, and I saw this guy bring them drinks. It was her first one, I'm pretty sure, and he must have done something to it because she looked like she got really dizzy all of the sudden. She collapsed a little, but it was like he was expecting it because he came over really fast and caught her before she fell. I came and got Emmett because I knew he knew her pretty well, but when we got back to where they were standing she was gone. Emmett went to look for her, and he told me to come tell you," she spilled it all out very quickly and nervously.

"Shit," I said, running my hand through my hair. Rose's hand jerked and knocked over two cups. "Show me where they were."

I started forcing my way through the crowd, plotting murder and not paying attention to who I was bumping into or whose drinks I was sloshing receiving a "Hey!" and a "Watch it!" I ignored Rose, who was following us. All I could think about was the fact that my baby sister was passed out somewhere while some son of a bitch took advantage of her. I saw everything through a red haze.

"They were standing right here," the girl said. What was her name again? Had she even told me? Everything but finding Alice was entirely inconsequential.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I swore. I turned to the cheerleader desperately. "What about your friend? Did she see where she took Alice?"

"Um..." She scanned the crowd. "Jess! Hey, Jess!" A petite girl with curly hair walked over. "Did you by any chance see where Alice went?"

"Oh, I didn't know you were friends with her. She started to pass out and Laurent offered to take her home. He said he knew her from class."

"Laurent, who?" Rosalie inquired. I ignored the answer. Right now, my priority was finding my sister. I would track this Laurent down and break his face later.

I pushed back through the crowd toward the door. Once I was outside, I ran toward the parking lot. I saw from a distance a large man holding in his arms a small girl who had clearly passed out. I sped up.

The man turned around. Emmett. I slowed as my entire body sagged in relief. Thank God.

"Edward! Thank you!" He turned to the cheerleader, who had followed us out. "Thanks, Avery-Anne. We owe you a big one." Right, Avery-Anne. She had told me that.

"No problem. I'm glad she's okay!" She turned and headed back to the party.

"Who the hell did this?" I asked. My worry was dissipating as it was replaced by unadulterated fury. I was going to break this guy into pieces.

"I have absolutely no idea, but don't worry. You'll be able to recognize him on campus by his broken nose and missing teeth."

I smiled thinly. Emmett was the best of friends. I would be seeking my own retribution later, but I was nonetheless glad that Emmett had already gotten started.

"Hey!" Rosalie. She came running out, hair flying behind her. "I'm so sorry, this girl was absolutely wasted and would _not_ let me leave. Is she okay? Do you need any help?"

"No, Rose, it's fine. I'm going to take Alice back to her room. Emmett, you think you can help me?"

"Yeah, of course. You coming, Rose?"

"I'd like to, but I promised my friend a ride home later, so I think I'm going to head back inside, unless you need me?"

"No, it's okay, we got it," Emmett replied. She gave him a quick kiss and started to walk away. "Hey Rose?" he called, grabbing her wrist and stopping her. "Do me a favor and don't accept any drinks from strange guys?" She smiled sadly and turned back.

"Alright. Are we taking Alice back to ours or to her dorm?"

"Let's take her back to her dorm to minimize the confusion when she wakes up. I'll just sleep on her floor."

We lifted Alice into the car. I sat in the back with her, stroking her hair, while Emmett drove us to her dorm, his fingers white against the steering wheel. The drive passed by quickly. He didn't say anything, to which I was grateful. I wanted to seethe in silence. When we got to her dorm, Emmett picked her back up and carried her into the elevator. We received an odd look from the RA on duty.

A few minutes later, we were in front of her door. I retrieved Alice's purse from where it was still resting on her shoulder and started to dig for her keys. It was one of those ridiculous purses that Alice could have fit inside of, and her keys were impossible to find. Emmett started shifting from foot to foot. I was grateful that he didn't complain about holding her. Emmett was large and Alice was small, but it still isn't easy carrying someone honeymoon style for that long.

Right as I got my hand on the keys ("Ah, ha!"), the door swung up. Alice's roommate peered out at us, her hair tousled from sleep.

"Can I help you?" she yawned. Her eyes widened as she saw Alice cradled in Emmett's arms. "Oh, God, come on in. What happened?" She flipped on the light switch.

I gave her a cursory glance, as I helped Emmett set Alice down on her desk chair. "GHB, Rohypnol, I don't really know. Some bastard drugged her."

Bella paled. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I dimly registered that Bella looked _good_, half asleep, in large men's boxers and a thin t-shirt. "Okay," she said, shaking her head, ridding her mind of the last remnants of sleep. "Here's what's going to happen. You, there," she said, pointing at Emmett, "You are going to go down to the first floor. There is a vending machine, where you will buy crackers and a Gatorade. We have bottled water in the room. Edward, right? You are going to go steal the large trash can from the bathroom, in case she wakes up and needs to throw up immediately. Before either of you come back in the room, make sure you knock, because I am going to be changing her into clothes that are comfortable to sleep in." Emmett left immediately.

I paused. "Why are you doing this? You hate Alice."

She looked at me. "Look, there are things you don't understand, okay? Just accept for right now that I'm trying to help and go steal the trash can, okay?" I paused again, thinking that over, before nodding and leaving the room. I didn't know what that meant or why she was helping, but I wasn't going to argue. It was comforting not to have to think about what to do. Her take-charge attitude was a huge help tonight.

I fetched the trashcan and walked back to the room. Emmett caught up to me on my way. We knocked on the door.

"One minute—okay, never mind. Come in." We walked back in. Bella had gotten Alice's clothes off and changed her into a loose t-shirt that went down to Alice's knees. I was fairly certain that Alice would never put something like that on her body.

Bella looked at me, accurately guessing my thoughts. "Sorry," she said sheepishly. "It would have been too difficult getting her into one of those cutesy matching sets that she normally wears, and I thought she might be embarrassed if I asked one of you to hold her up while I slid pants on her. So I just put her in something of mine."

I wondered idly if Bella had stolen a boyfriend's clothes to sleep in. Something about the thought sparked an emotion I didn't quite recognize.

"Okay, do you think the two of you can lift her up onto her bed?" Bella asked. I shook my head, clearing those thoughts out. Emmett grabbed Alice's ankles, and I grabbed her underneath her arms, and together we swung Alice up and laid her down on her back.

"No, no, no! Not like that!" Bella got on Alice's bed and began pushing her so she was lying on her side. She got back down on the ground and opened Alice's mouth, reaching in her mouth and making sure her tongue was laying flat before leaving her mouth agape.

I looked at Emmett. He glanced back at me, looking every bit as mystified as I felt. Bella turned back to us, noticing and correctly interpreting out expressions. "She was drugged, so it's possible that she'll throw up at some point during the night. If she doesn't wake up for it and she's lying on her back, she could choke on her vomit and die. That's what the trashcan is for, by the way." She moved the trashcan from where I had set it by the door and put it next to Alice's bed, level with her head. She then moved the crackers and Gatorade that Emmett had gotten to Alice's bedside table, along with some bottled waters that she fetched from on top of the dresser. "She'll probably wake up dehydrated, and she'll want something to drink," Bella explained.

I looked at Emmett and shrugged. Whatever problems Bella and Alice had with each other, Bella had been a lifesaver tonight.

"Well, if you don't need me anymore, I'm going to go back to the party and check on Rose. You coming?"

"Go ahead," Bella told me. "I'll stay with her."

I glared at her. "You've proven yourself perfectly able to look after her, but she's still my little sister who almost got raped tonight. I'm not leaving. Go ahead, Emmett. I'll have Alice drive me home tomorrow morning." He nodded and left.

Bella exhaled. "Well, someone should stay awake and make sure she doesn't start to have trouble breathing. Why don't you take my bed? I can work on homework."

I frowned. "No, that's okay. She's my sister, and you've already helped a ton. I don't want to take your bed. Go to sleep. I'll wait with her."

"Look, no offense, I'm sure you're a great guy, but if you think there's anyway I'm going to be able to fall asleep with Random Stranger that I've met once in my life hanging out in my room wide awake, you're obviously an idiot. Take the damn bed, okay?" she snapped at me. I blinked in surprise.

"You have a temper," I observed, oddly amused by that fact. I wanted to know more about this girl who refused to know my sister, but still went out of her way at one in the morning to take care of her.

She scowled at me. "So I've been told. Now go to bed, or get out."

"Fine, fine. I'm used to women ordering me to bed, anyway," I said, enjoying the way her nostrils flared and her eyes narrowed. She was fun to provoke. I kicked off my jeans and my shoes. Bella immediately turned crimson. I laughed. "I'm going to sleep in boxers and my undershirt, if that's okay with you?"

"Yeah, sure," she mumbled, looking everywhere except at me. I finished stripping down.

"You sure you're okay with this?" I asked. "There's no reason why you should have to stay up."

She shot me a quick glare before instantly looking away again. Her cheeks were still painted red. "Just go to sleep, Edward."

I shrugged and dropped a quick kiss on Alice's forehead. "Goodnight, T-Mac," I murmured, before walking over to Bella's bed.

Bella flipped off the lights, and I hopped into her bed. And there, knowing my sister was safe and well taken care of, I was lured to sleep by the scent of flowers and strawberries, and something else uniquely _Bella_.

End Chapter.

Wow! That one was fun to write. So I hope you all enjoyed the first real Edward/Bella interaction of the story. Not love at first sight or anything, but he's definitely interested. Let me know what you thought!


	8. Chapter 8

Agh, Bella is so difficult to write. Okay, so a couple people mentioned being excited about seeing Edward kick Laurent's ass. I hadn't actually planned on writing that scene. Obviously, when you write a story with this kind of structure, jumping from character to character, a lot gets left out. While that situation will certainly be referenced, I wasn't going to include it. If enough people want it, though, I could write it as a one shot, so let me know.

A note on reviews!: I love for you all to review as much as possible, because I genuinely want your feedback and opinions. However, I'm hoping that eventually this will be a story that generates quite a few reviews a chapter, so I don't want to get in the habit of individually responding to each review. BUT, since your opinions do matter to me, if you have a burning question you need answered, want to discuss something, or have an amazing idea, please send me personal message and I will get back to you.

So, a note on Charlie (and then I'll shut up, I promise). I love Charlie. I absolutely adore him. I refuse to read any fanfiction where Charlie is abusive to Bella because that is an awful sort of blasphemy. If you are going to give Bella an abusive father, make it someone else. There are characters that you can acceptably defile in that way (i.e. the Dursleys) and characters you can't. I just want everyone to know, it killed me not to have Charlie be Bella's father, but it just didn't work in the story. And of course, I had to include him in some way, so he took her in when her life exploded around her. You find out a little more about that in this chapter. I don't own anything. Enjoy!

Chapter Eight: Bella

_Aw, hell!_ I pulled off my glove, rotating my wrist and flexing my fingers. Ever since I picked up boxing, my knuckles constantly bore yellowish bruises and my wrists were always sore. But this time, I was fairly certain I had sprained something.

The pain was worth it, though. I was _strong_. I had been so utterly _weak_ in high school, so _soft_. My body was soft with inactivity. I was slight, but not at all muscular. But then James walked into my life and shattered any sense of security and safety I had. I was lost and desperate until one day, Jasper came to me and dragged me to a gym. Where my arms and shoulders had been undefined and ineffectual, they were now toned and sturdy. A mild breeze could have once blown me over, but now I could stand strong, if not balanced.

"_Alright, Marie. I could let you sit around and mope and live in fear, or you could learn to defend yourself. Which is it? _

_I looked at him, aghast. "You want to teach me to fight? Seriously? I'm a danger to people just walking, and you want me to learn how to throw a punch?" _

"_Marie, darlin', think of how you're feeling right now. Think of all that stress, all that anxiety, all that anger. Think of all that, and tell me the idea of punching things doesn't feel good right now."_

_I paused. Now, _that_, was an excellent point._

"_Alright, Jasper, you've convinced me. Do your worst."_

After that day, I was like a woman possessed. I was spending two to three hours at the gym everyday, working on my form, my strength, my endurance, whether or not Jasper could be there. If I wanted to go for a run, I had to use the machines at the gym anyway. Mom never would have let go for a run by myself, and I would have been constantly looking over my shoulder anyway. Mentally, I was a wreck, but physically, I was strong for the first time in my life. Too bad it proved not to be enough.

"Hey, Bells. You done already?" Jake asked as he walked into the dingy little room.

"No, I think I hurt myself." I showed him my rapidly swelling wrist. He took hold of my arm, bending my wrist back and forth, taking note of my winces.

"I think it should be fine if you ice it. You may want to take it easy on the bags for a while though." He studied my face. "Did something happen last night? You must have been distracted, and you were hitting pretty hard."

I scowled.

_Four forty. Four forty-one. Four forty-two. I was giving this until five o'clock, and then I was getting up. I was imprisoned in my room, watching my roommate while her brother slept in my bed. I kept myself awake reading and writing, for the most part. At some point in the night, Edward had stirred and woken briefly._

"_What are you working on," he asked, his voice thick with sleep._

"_A comparison of Poe's use of duality and treatment of color in three of his short stories. Eight pages."_

"_Oh." Edward didn't appear to have a response to that. "I suppose that's why I'm a biology major."_

"_Yes, probably so. Go back to sleep. Alice is fine."_

_He did, and an hour and half later, my paper was finished and I had edited it twice. And I was getting extremely antsy._

_Five o'clock._

"_Edward! Hey Edward!"_

"_G'way. I'm warm and happy and it's Saturday," he mumbled, his voice muffled in my pillow._

"_Um, I don't really care. Wake up!" _

_Edward sat up, looking around my room as he processed where he was. "Is Alice okay? Did something happen?"_

"_She's still asleep, but her breathing has been fine throughout the night, and no vomiting. She'll feel like crap when she wakes up, but it's more psychological trauma you'll have to worry about."_

"_What do I do about that?" he asked._

"_How the hell do I know? She's your sister, you would know better than me what she needs," I answered tersely._

"_You just seemed to know what you were doing last night. I thought you might know how to help in an emotional crisis as well."_

_I gave a short laugh. The irony._

"_Well, I don't. So wake up. I'm leaving, and I didn't think you would want Alice to wake up alone."_

"_You're leaving? It's five in the morning!" _

"_So? I've been awake for hours. And now there's somewhere I need to be, so wake up and take care of your sister."_

"Yes, you could say I was distracted. My roommate got roofied last night."

Jake gave a low whistle. "She okay?" he asked.

"Well, when I went back to the room earlier this afternoon she wasn't there, so I'm assuming she survived. She didn't get raped, anyway. But the point is, her brother and his friend dragged her in at one in the morning last night, and had no idea how to handle it. So I was tired and surprised, and obviously a little sensitive to what had happened to her, so I helped. And then her brother didn't want to leave, so I offered to stay awake with Alice and gave him my bed."

"Geez, if I had known it was that easy to get in your bed—"

"Jake!"

"Sorry, sorry, couldn't resist. Continue, please."

"So I stayed up half the night, and come five in the morning, I was absolutely stir crazy. I woke Edward up—that's her brother—and told him I was leaving. Which was fine, until he started _thanking_ me."

"Well, you did them a huge favor! What did you expect?"

"Jake, I've spent the last two months trying to avoid any effort at friendship. Alice has continued to be persistent despite the fact that I've been distant, I've made really awful excuses not to hang out with her, and I spend all my team either here or at the library. And then, last night, I stay up all night making sure that she's okay, which is a pretty clear indicator that I don't hate her. And now she's going to try twice as hard."

"Maybe since you looked out for her last night, she'll respect your wishes and leave you alone," Jake suggested.

"God, I don't know. I just need to distract myself. I need to stop thinking about this. And thus, the injured hand." I shook my head ruefully. "God, Jake, I'm just so tired of fighting all of this. Maybe I _want_ to go see the latest movie with Alice. Maybe I _would_ like to help Angela with her set production this weekend. But most of all, maybe I would like to go home and have my mom tell me that everything is going to be okay. Charlie's great, but I miss my_ parents_. And I don't even know how her recovery from surgery was. I can't even call home, on the off chance that James can somehow trace it. I don't know anything, and it is _killing _me." At that, Jake pulled me into a warm embrace. I collapsed against him, silent tears trickling down my face. I was grateful everyday for Jake, as much as it terrified me to be friends with him. He was just so easy to be with. He persistently ignored me whenever I rebuffed his attempts at friendship, and wormed his way into my life before I realized what was happening. And now, I needed him like a drug. He was so lighthearted, so rarely in a bad mood, that he brightened my day everytime we spoke. He was unfailingly there for me, and when he was put to the test, when he learned what I was hiding from, he didn't turn away. He pulled me into his arms and held me against his chest, telling me that he demanded all of his friends come with a crazy stalker and a dark past, or they just weren't enough fun for him. I could only shake my head and laugh, relieved that he was staying with me, that he was still going to be there to help me learn to be happy.

I remembered that phone call to Charlie two and a half weeks ago.

"_Hey, Charlie. It's Bella."_

"_Bella, hey. Is something wrong?" he asked, immediately alarmed. I winced at the idea that he thought I only called because something was wrong. He had taken me in without question with no benefit to himself. I should really call him more often._

"_No, not really. Well, sort of. There's this guy—"_

"_He's following you? Do you think he's connected to James in any anyway?"_

"_No, no, nothing like that. He's my friend. He's pretty spectacular, actually."_

_Charlie paused. "Wait. Is he like a boyfriend? Are you calling me to let me know that you're dating?"_

_I understood his surprise. We didn't have the kind of relationship where we discussed our romantic lives._

"_No, we're just friends." I panicked for an instant. Charlie knew the risk I brought upon any of my friends. Would he think I was being selfish? "Do you think it's okay for me to be close to people? It's a little late at this point, and I swear I tried to push him away at first, but he kept trying, and—"_

"_Bell, honey, calm down. I think it's great that you have someone there for you. I never liked how your answer was to push people away from you. I understand being happy alone, but it wasn't healthy how you refused to even have fun with anyone."_

_Somewhat appeased, I finally got around to why I called him. "Well, the thing is, we've gotten really close. And he knows that I have some sort of a past, and I think he wants to know what it is. No, scratch that. He desperately wants to know what it is, but he won't ask because he knows it's a sensitive subject, and he respects my privacy. And honestly, I want to tell him, because of I'm so _sick_ of lying about _everything_, and because I need someone here. Not that I would have the first idea how to go about telling him. It's not really an easy subject to broach." _

"_Do you trust him?"_

"_I do, and if it were just me at stake, then I would have told him already. But I won't put you in danger, and I won't put my parents in danger."_

"_Bella, I don't mind if he knows about your situation. And as long as you didn't tell him the details, such as the fact that you changed your name or what your real name is or what his name is, you wouldn't be risking much of anything."_

"_I know." I sighed. "But right now, I feel like a fraud every time he says my name. I just think if I tell him anything, I have to tell him everything. I hate being dishonest, but at least he knows I'm being dishonest. If I told him that much and not the rest, I would be dishonestly pretending to be honest."_

_There was a long pause as Charlie digested that. It really hadn't made much sense to me either when I said it. _

"_Okay. How about this: I'll switch shifts this weekend and drive up to visit you. I'll meet this guy and let you know what I think."_

"_Oh, Charlie, I don't want to make you do that—"_

"_Bella. I'll call you when I'm twenty minutes outside of town."_

"Alright. We're going to do something fun," Jake declared, releasing me and briskly brushing the tears off my face with his thumbs.

"Such as?" I asked with a sniffle and a watery smile.

"Such as…we are going to drive to the beach, and then between the two of us chug a fifth of tequila and go crazy on some Jetskis."

I blinked dumbly. There were so many things wrong with that idea that only a teenage boy could have come up with it. "Okay. I'm in."

End Chapter.

Okay, please don't hate me for the lack of Edward/Bella romance. Understand that right now, Bella is extremely distracted and has some pretty serious baggage. She's working on holding herself together right now, and probably wouldn't even notice if she fell in love with someone. She's got more important things to worry about even if she didn't have to be careful of whom she let get close to her. Right now, she's just starting to feel comfortable in her own skin.

So please, review! I pretty much had the chapters up until now all planned out, but now I have some decisions to make. I have a definite idea of where this is going, but some details are up for grabs, so if you have any fabulous suggestions (I can't promise to actually use them, but I will read them), then, please, let me know! For example, Alice has yet to tell me how she is going to react to hearing about what Bella did for her. And if you don't have any suggestions for me, I still crave your feedback like Bella craves some Jacob comfort and some Edward nookie.

Leon: Thanks for pointing out the typo in the previous chapter. Justin was originally the name of the character who attacked Alice, and apparently I missed that sentence when I changed the name to Laurent. I went back and changed it, so thanks for bringing it to my attention.


	9. Chapter 9

I don't own any of the characters.

Interlude: Renee

_Look there she goes, that girl is so peculiar._

_I wonder if she's feeling well._

_With a dreamy far off look, and her nose stuck in a book,_

_What a puzzle to the rest of us is Belle!_

_-Beauty and the Beast_

I called her Belle. I called her Belle, without ever realizing how fitting the name would prove to be. She was my beautiful dark-haired daughter with the crazy parents, the child who always had her nose in a book and would rather read than shop. The name fit. My Marie, who I called Belle without ever understanding how prophetic the name was.

I was twenty-eight when I got pregnant with her. I was dating a twenty-two year old, Phil, who had just graduated from college and was playing baseball in the minor league. I was sure when I told him I was pregnant he would break up with me. He was twenty-two and had his life ahead of him. A child is a lot of responsibility.

He surprised me. We got married a week later in City Hall, and went on a short but sweet honeymoon in Santa Barbara. Seven months later, on September 13, my beautiful girl was born. We called her Marie Susannah Dwyer, after my grandmother and Phil's aunt.

She was such a _quiet_ girl, such a serious little thing. It amused Phil that more often than not, it was Marie who took care of me. She humored my flightiness. She went with me to pottery classes, to yoga classes, to French classes. We took cooking classes together. She excelled there where didn't. I liked to experiment and get creative in the kitchen. Once she was in high school, she was both the cook and the accountant of the family.

She lit up our lives. She was sweet, and clumsy, and my greatest love and my best friend. She was entirely unaware of her own charm. She tripped and stumbled and _floated_ through life, her head always in the clouds, growing more romantic and fanciful even as she remained steadfastly practical. She was content, while always wanting more, this inventor's daughter of mine.

_Look there she goes, that girl is strange no question_

_Dazed and distracted, can't you tell?_

_Never part of any crowd, cuz her head's up on some cloud._

_No denying she's a funny girl, that Belle!_

I worried about her sometimes. She seemed so happy in solitude. I still don't know where that came from. I was always jumping from one organization to the next, always wanting to be surrounded by people and conversation. Marie was happy in her own thoughts, and I worried that she never had many friends in high school. But she never seemed to really want them. I think she got lonely sometimes, but I was her friend. And she preferred the company of Romeo and Elizabeth Darcy to the vapid conversation of her contemporaries.

I blamed myself for that sometimes. She always seemed so _old_ for her age, and I wondered if that wasn't from this role reversal in our relationship, where she took care of her childlike mother. But my angel, bless her heart, never resented it.

We had fun, she and I. When Phil was out of town for away games and I had to stay in town and work, we would pull out air mattresses and sleep on the living room floor while watching movies. Or we would invent new desserts, using my ideas and her skills. She helped me grade my students' assignments and I proofread all of her essays for class.

And now I haven't seen her for ten months. I've aged. I could be a proper mother now, if only I had a daughter. When you suffer through what our family has suffered through, you don't remain unchanged. I can't call her when Phil is out of town and I'm lonely, and she has no one to celebrate with when she does well on a test. I _hope_ she's doing well in school, anyway. She was always responsible, but once again, trauma changes people. But if I knew my Belle, she probably coped by throwing herself even harder into her schoolwork and her boxing.

It was such a shock to Phil and me when she took up that sport. We understood her desire to feel strong, to feel like she could take care of herself. We supported her. My little girl was always such a little pacifist, such a quiet girl, that I couldn't recognize the fury that escaped her when she was with a punching bag. But at the same time, I was glad she had this outlet. Without it, she would have kept all of her anger and fear pent up inside of her. I released pent up emotions by crying every so often. It was cleansing and cathartic. Marie had no such release. Her tear ducts were wired directly to her temper, but she rarely cried just from stress or heartache.

And I had to watch as a part of her died inside. As the threat grew, I could see the light flicker dim in her eyes as her belief in happy endings waned, as her sense of security died My little girl, who walked in a dreamworld, one step in fantasy one step in reality was forced to wake up and take notice of the world she lived in, a world where evil was all too prevalent, and in some horrible stroke of fate had rested his eyes on my daughter.

And then, the worst happened. And two days later, Detective Clearwater came with a grim look and a letter from my daughter, and my heart shattered.

Now, I don't even know her name. I don't know who she is living with, who she now calls "Mom" and "Dad" for the sake of appearances. I don't know where she is in school, I don't know if she's a Literature major like she always planned. Yet I still feel the guilt of deception when I hear people discuss the tragic death of my daughter. I can only hope that if she were to die, I would at least be informed.

I never imagined this when I gave her that nickname.

Belle left her family to protect them, making the ultimate sacrifice. And my daughter went to face the Beast alone.

End Chapter.


	10. Chapter 10

So I just read a few of my old chapters, and I unfortunately noticed quite a few typos. Part of this is because I'm trying to hurry and get a lot of this out before I start having a ton of work to do, forcing my update time to slow drastically, and part is because I have no beta reader. So, I am in the market currently. I'll try to do a better job of proofreading, though.

Thanks so much for the great response to the last chapter! It was definitely my favorite chapter to write so far. A few of you mentioned being confused over what exactly happened to Bella. Don't worry. You're supposed to be confused. All will be revealed in time. Eventually, you will find out about James, Renee's surgery, why Bella left home, everything.

This chapter has an entirely different tone than the last few. It's all pure fun. Because let's face it—the Ed/Al/Em/Rose gang knows nothing about Bella, and they are young and stupid and in college. There will be plot development, but not until towards the end. This is mainly goodhearted Emmett/Alice violence.

Chapter Ten: Rosalie

Impatient, I rapped on the door a second time. The first time, there had been no answer. Maybe Emmett was in the shower.

The door swung open (_finally_), and I saw Edward on the other side.

"Edward, where—"

"Shhhh." He put his fingers over his lips, eyes dancing. "You're going to distract them," he whispered sternly.

"Okay…Distract who?" I whispered back, baffled.

He opened the door wider, once he was convinced I would keep quiet, and let me in. I walked in to see Emmett sitting on their couch, eyes closed—what the hell, was he _meditating_? I whirled to face Edward.

"Edward, what is—"

"Shhhhh. They're preparing."

It was then that I noticed Alice. Her eyes were closed as well, and she was doing what looked like jaw exercises, first opening and closing her mouth, then moving her mandible around in a circular motion.

"Okay, Edward," I whispered. "What the hell are they preparing for?"

He grinned. "You, Rosalie, are just in time to witness what may be the scariest yet most entertaining thing you have ever seen in your life. Sadly, to the destruction of my apartment, but such is life."

I rolled my eyes impatiently. "Okay, cut the bullshit, Edward. Why are we whispering, why is my boyfriend meditating, and why does your little sister look like she is warming up for an emotional poetry reading?"

"It is time for the Annual Great Race, of course." He beamed. Clearly, I wasn't getting anything else out of him.

_Enough_. I stalked over to Emmett. "Emmett, what is going on?"

He opened one eye and looked at me, his expression not changing. "I'm doing my pre-game ritual. I have to get in the right mindset."

I threw my hands in the air and turned my attention to Alice again. Before I could demand an explanation, an alarm went off.

"Alright, athletes! Time up! In your places!" Edward barked. Emmett and Alice both stood up and hustled to the kitchen, Emmett stopping and dropping a quick kiss on my lips on his way.

"Okay, _now_, you going to tell me what's going on?" I asked Edward as we followed them into the kitchen.

"Yes. You are about to see something incredibly disturbing and hilarious at the same time."

"And that would be…" I prompted.

"Every year, when the North Star aligns with—" he let out a great OOMPF as my elbow connected solidly with his diaphragm.

"Edward, I'm serio—"

"Okay, okay! Alice and Emmett are about to have their annual hotdog eating contest. That's how they respectively get in the zone and psych themselves up for it."

My jaw dropped. "Wait. Your ninety pound sister and my two hundred and eighty five point boyfriend are about to have a _hotdog eating_ contest?" My voice rose progressively throughout the sentence. "Alice is going to explode!"

He frowned. "Hey, don't discount Teeny Mac. She won last year, and would have won the year before if Emmett hadn't tripped her and sat on her. She won't let _that_ happen ever again, trust me."

"Wait!" I exclaimed, unable to believe my ears. "They've done this before?" I frowned. "Emmett _sat_ on her?"

"Of course. I said that it was the _Annual_ Great Race."

I shook my head in disbelief. "Okay. So what are the rules?"

Emmett grinned. "Oh, it's pretty simple. We aren't allowed to have outside help or props. Other than that, no big rules. First person to fifteen wins, and you can only eat the hotdogs that belong to you. No pre-slicing. Three hotdog penalty for every time you throw up before the game ends. Automatic forfeit if you vomit _on_ the other person, and a ten dog penalty if you vomit on their dogs, resulting in a thirteen dog penalty. No touching the other person's dogs while they're in the fridge."

I was pretty sure _I_ was going to be the one to vomit.

Edward added, "And for a win to be valid, they have to keep the last hot dog down for at least thirty seconds."

Alice piped up with "We add more rules as we see how dirty the game gets. For example, the rule about outside props was instated the year Emmett handcuffed me to my chair and moved my dogs to the middle of the table so I couldn't even eat with my face. I ended up splitting open my forehead trying to get to them. See?" She pointed to a thin white line above her left eyebrow that I had never noticed before. "But, while he can't bring in a prop such as a handcuff, he would be personally within his rights to use a scarf that I am wearing to gag me or tie my hands. He did that my freshman year of high school."

I'm pretty sure I was catching flies in my mouth at this point.

Emmett joined in. "And the rule about outside help is from last year. Alice hired a stripper and ordered her to stay on my lap, no matter what I said, because I had a fear of physical intimacy and needed to learn how to be physically close to people. She beat me by a good two minutes."

I didn't ask what happened to incite them to add the rule about vomiting on each other. There were some things that I was just happier not knowing. At this point, I could only shake my head. The idea of Emmett being afraid of physical intimacy was hilarious in its own right, but this entire scenario… And Alice hired a _stripper_? How serious was this competition? "Okay. I'm excited to see it."

"You say that because you've never seen it before," Edward said sardonically. "Alright, then," he continued. He had just finished setting out two plates of hotdogs, each set with about thirty hotdogs, and every condiment known to man. "Rose, you count for Alice, and I'll count for Emmett. Extra dogs in the fridge if you need them."

"But you said only fifteen—"

"You'll understand, trust me. Okay! Ready! Set!" He paused dramatically, and Emmett and Alice exchanged a quick handshake. "GO!"

I jumped back as Emmett _lunged_ across the table, simultaneously sticking two hotdogs in his mouth and knocking Alice's plate off the table. She quickly retaliated by taking a tube of wasabi in one hand and a bottle of maple syrup in the other hand and _dousing_ Emmett's entire plate with them before ducking down and sticking a hotdog in her mouth, chewing furiously as she picked the others up off the ground. I was absolutely flabbergasted, as Edward cracked up next to me. "Two, Emmett!"

"Alice, that's disgusting!!" Emmett bellowed through a mouth full of hotdog. He quickly swallowed and picked up another two dogs, grimacing at the wasabi and syrup and walking around the table and smashing some of the hotdogs that were still on the floor. Now I understood why they needed more than fifteen. As he stepped on a hotdog, Alice, so quickly I would have missed it if I hadn't been watching her, tied both of his shoelaces together. I winced as he hit the ground. Alice had finished a third hotdog by this point.

"Alice, three!"

"Emmett, four!"

Emmett kicked off his shoes, not even bothering to try to untie them, and swiped at Alice's hotdog plate. He missed the first time, but got it the second time when he distracted her by squirting mustard in her face. He promptly dumped her hotdogs in his now empty shoes. Her face contorted in disgust. Off the floor, she could handle. Out of Emmett's shoes were out of the question. She opened the fridge to get another plate, swallowing the dog that was already in her mouth.

"Emmett, six!"

"Alice, four!"

Alice turned around with her new plate, throwing Emmett's dog-filled shoe at his face. He ducked, and she took advantage of his distraction to grab his plate and toss it across the room. It hit the wall and cracked, leaving a greasy, green and brown mess on the wall and the tile below. Edward flinched. "This is why I wish this were an outside event."

I could only shake my head dumbly as I watched the scene in front of us. Emmett had bodily carried Alice over to the mess and was rubbing her face in the mess of wasabi, syrup, and hotdog that was on the floor, even as he picked some out of the mess and continued to eat them.

"Emmett, eight!!"

Alice shrieked and thrashed, landing a solid kick right above Emmett's knee and using his moment of distraction to escape. I cringed. He had to play football on that knee.

She ran back to the kitchen, shoving three dogs in her mouth. She was four behind.

"God, Alice, don't choke."

"Oh, she won't," Edward reassured me. "They're pros at this, trust me. Emmett, ten!"

Emmett finally gave up on eating the half-destroyed, condiment covered mess and went to the fridge to get his second plate out. As he did, Alice ran out of the room with her plate and a bottle of water, taking protective measures. She washed what was in her mouth down with water and stuck another three in.

"Alice, seven!"

Emmett grabbed a bottle of olive oil and stalked toward Alice as we followed him.

"Emmett, twelve!"

"Alice, ten!"

Alice shrieked as Emmett grabbed her in a headlock, unscrewed the top of the oil and dumped it all over head, rubbing it into her hair for good measure. She tried to knock Emmett's plate out his hand, but he held it above her head. She ducked away from his arm and ran to the other side of the room, swallowing two more as she went.

"Alice, twelve!"

Emmett growled, and shoved another in his mouth with one hand, throwing the remote at Alice with the other. She squealed as she dodged it, picking up the bottle of mustard and retaliating. Emmett dropped his plate as he knocked the bottle away, but he already had his three final hotdogs in his mouth.

"Fifteen, Emmett! I repeat, fifteen for Emmett. Alice, are you going to eat three more and hope that he vomits?" Before he finished saying fifteen, she had shoved three more in her mouth and started chewing furiously. She swallowed, and we waited, Alice growing greener and greener as Edward watched his stopwatch.

"And, thirty seconds! Emmett is the victor!" Alice rushed to the bathroom, retching violently. I internally echoed the sentiment.

Emmett wasn't far behind her. "Alice, hurry up! I desperately need to brush my teeth."

Edward looked at me, grinning. "So, what'd you think? You have now seen the true Emmett MacCarty. Wondering what you ever saw in him?"

I stared back at him, my jaw opening and closing uselessly. "I…have no words. I have absolutely nothing to say." He laughed.

Emmett and Alice walked back in, both of them looking much cleaner. "Good game, Alice. Better luck next year."

She plopped down on the couch, rubbing her stomach and still looking rather green. "I hope you realize that I loathe you with an eternal and unrelenting passion."

"Alice, you made me eat a maple syrup and wasabi mixture. Trust me, the feeling is mutual."

"So, how long has this been going on?" I asked.

Emmett and Alice looked at each other. "Eight years?" he asked. "Nine, maybe?"

"Well, the first time was the fourth of July celebration right after my ninth birthday, right?" She looked at Edward for confirmation, and he nodded.

"The game was a lot cleaner back then," he informed me. "They just sat down and tried to see who could finish the most in one minute. Clearly, things have…evolved."

"Clearly," I echoed, still aghast.

"So I guess nine years, but only eight races. We missed one year because we had gotten in so much trouble the year before. Mom came home earlier than we expected and was…less than pleased."

"I can't imagine," I said dryly. Mrs. MacCarty was terrifying when provoked, and I shuddered to picture her reaction to the destruction I saw before me right now.

"Alright," Edward declared. "Enough revisiting the past. As always, I am fighting the dueling emotions of pride and disgust in the both of you. But you need to get this mess cleaned up before our apartment starts to stink. Which was approximately ten minutes ago."

"Seriously, Edward? Can it not wait until I no longer feel like I'm _dying_?" Alice whined.

"Well, that better happen soon. There's no way I'm going anywhere near that disgusting mess."

Alice sat up, a mischievous sparkle in her eyes. "Alright, I'll do it now, but I get a favor."

"Fine, anything." Edward glanced at Alice, and apparently reading something in her face immediately snapped, "Not. _That._"

"Please, Edward," she wheedled.

I looked at Emmett, who shrugged. Edward and Alice knew each other so well that they rarely needed words. They seemed to communicate silently: Edward knowing Alice's thoughts, and Alice predicting Edward's reactions. It was disconcerting until you got used to it, and sometimes even then.

"It's absolutely none of your business," Edward said firmly.

"Ah," Emmett said with a smile. He, apparently, now understood what they were talking about. "Actually, Edward, it is kind of her business."

"Shut up, Emmett," Edward retorted.

"What are you guys talking about?" I asked. They ignored me. I _hate_ that.

"You know, Emmett? Tell me!" Alice ordered.

"Emmett," Edward said warningly.

"_What_ is going on?" I asked through clenched teeth. During exchanges like this, I felt like they were punishing me for only having met them in college. I didn't grow up with them, so I actually needed to be _told_ what the subject of conversation was. Having it happened twice in an the course of an hour was especially galling.

Alice turned to me. "We're talking about why the hell Edward's hands are all torn apart and bandaged up. He admitted that he was in a fight, but won't tell me over what or with whom, even though, according to Emmett here, it concerns me."

My eyes widened. "Seriously, Edward? You still haven't told her? What the hell is the matter with you? She's a big girl, she can handle it."

"_Rose_ knows? Edward!"

"She shouldn't have to worry about it. I _took care_ of it," Edward growled at me.

I rolled my eyes and turned to Alice. I adored Edward, but his protective instinct was ridiculous. "Edward beat the shit out of Laurent DuBois because he gave you that drink last weekend."

"Rosalie!" Edward hissed, standing up. Emmett yanked him back down.

"Chill, Edward."

"What do you mean?" Alice asked. "Why would you hit him over that? It's not like he could know what a lightweight I am."

Edward slumped back into the couch. "_This_ is why I wouldn't tell her."

My jaw dropped. Flabbergasted, I asked, "You didn't tell her about last weekend? You let her think that she just _drank_ too much? Is that your idea of _protecting_ her?"

"Forgive me for wanting to protect my sister from people like him."

"Oh, really?" My voice rose. I was livid. "If you want to protect her, she has to know that scum like him are out there. By not telling her, she won't know better than to take a drink from someone like him. You aren't protecting her, you're preventing her from protecting herself. What happens when she's at a party and you and Emmett aren't there to take care of her?" I turned to Alice.

"Rose, don't you dare," Edward warned.

"Alice, Laurent tried to date rape you last weekend. He put a roofie in your drink. That's why you don't remember anything. You didn't just get blackout drunk over two drinks."

Edward snarled. Alice sucked in a sharp breath and snapped "Shut up, Edward. I had a right to know." She looked back at me. "So that's why Edward stayed over? To make sure I didn't suffer any adverse effects from the drug?"

I nodded.

Alice buried her head in her hands. "Okay, Edward," she said, her voice muffled. "Whole story. Now, please."

He sighed. "A cheerleader saw you get drugged and told Emmett. Emmett found you and Laurent together and broke his nose. We brought you home, and Bella woke up and took care of you. I refused to leave, and she refused to go to sleep with me in the room—she's really paranoid, did you know that?—so I took her bed and she stayed awake and did homework to make sure you were alright."

"Bella?" Alice asked, stunned. "Bella, my roommate who hates me? I thought she just let you guys in and told you to put food and water by my bed and helped me change into pajamas."

"No. She stayed awake all night."

"Wow." Alice leaned back, her face pensive. "Why you were the one I woke up to?"

"She said she had somewhere to be around five in the morning, but I kind of got the impression that she didn't _want_ you to know. That's part of why I didn't say anything, by the way, _Rose_. But I really don't think she hates you, Alice," Edward added.

"Things _have_ been sort of…different this week," she said slowly. "We still aren't friends, and she certainly isn't talkative all of the sudden, but she's been a little nicer. She'll actually answer my questions about how her day's been. Granted, she probably never imagined that you _lied_ to me about last weekend, so she probably just felt bad because I had a traumatic experience," Alice finished with a glare at Edward.

"Sor-ry," Edward spat out. "Forgive me for trying to look out for you."

Alice looked at me. "One of Edward's great character flaws is the inability to recognize that the women in his life can actually take of themselves. Endearing sometimes, but sometimes it just engenders homicidal urges."

She stood. "Rose, do you mind taking me home? Edward picked me up today, but I would like to talk to you."

I eyed her. "Um. That's fine. Do you mind changing clothes first?"

Startled, she looked down and laughed. "Yeah, sorry. I forgot I was covered in condiments. Edward, I'm stealing clothes." He acquiesced with a floppy wave, the other hand resting over his eyes. God, he could be such a _drama queen_ sometimes.

Alice disappeared into his bedroom. Edward opened one eye and glared at me through his fingers. "You had no right to do that, Rose."

My ire rose again. "No, you had no right to keep something like that from her. She's a big girl, Edward."

"Alright, that's enough." Alice walked back out. "Let's _go_, Rose."

"Fine. Emmett, call me later?"

"Sure thing, babe," he said. "Hope you enjoyed your first Great Race viewing experience."

"Enjoyed, hmmm. That might not be the right word for it, but it was certainly an experience. I'll see you." We walked out the door and across the parking lot.

"Rosalie?" Alice said in a small voice as soon as we got in the car. "When Emmett found Laurent and me together—what exactly did he find?"

"Oh, Alice!" I hadn't even thought about what my phrasing would make her think. "He didn't get very far, I promise. Trust me, that's the only reason why he's still alive. Emmett found him as he was working on getting your shirt off. I don't know what happened exactly before Emmett found the two of you, but Emmett stopped him pretty early."

She breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you. That's much better than what I expected. I mean, it still sucks, and I'm upset about it, but—actually, what am I thinking? If it were any worse than that, there's no way Edward would have been able to hide it from me this long. I just didn't want to ask in front of the boys, especially since Edward was already feeling overprotective. I knew that you'd be honest with me, too." She paused. "So what did Edward do to him?"

I grinned. "Laurent is now walking around campus with his jaw wired shut, and it'll probably be quite a while until he can even _think_ about a girl that way. Guys usually stay away from that during a fight, but I guess anything goes when your little sister gets attacked."

She smiled tightly and then sighed. "Now, I just don't know what I'm going to do about Bella. I mean, do I pretend like nothing happened? Do I thank her?"

"Whatever you think is best. If she hasn't said anything about it or given you her version of events, though, it sounds like she wants to forget it ever happened."

Alice giggled. "Oh, God, she came in to our room _so_ drunk the next evening. It was hilarious."

"Really?" I said, my interest piqued. "I thought you said she didn't really party or go out."

"She doesn't! That's why it was so funny. Her friend, the really hot Indian I told you about, had to drag her up to the room. Apparently they downed an entire _handle_ of Jose, and wanted to rent Jetskis, but were so drunk that they weren't allowed to. She's a very chatty drunk. I learned that she thinks chin dimples are wildly sexy and that she ate dirt on a dare once. Also, her ballet teacher in second grade asked her mother to remove her from the class before she caused someone actual physical harm. She actually cried when she told me that story."

"Drunken jetskiing," I mused. "That seems like a bad idea on so many levels. In a _good_ way."

"I know! I didn't realize Bella was _fun_." We pulled into her dorm parking lot. "Thanks for the ride, Rose."

"No problem. We still on for lunch tomorrow?"

"Of course."

I put my car in reverse, and rolled down my window. "Hey, and Alice?"

"Yeah?" She turned back and looked at me, shading her face against the sun.

"Take a shower! You absolutely _reek_!"

She laughed and waved as I drove off. Alice seemed to possess permanently high spirits. I could tell that what happened bothered her much more than she let on, but she would recover. I could already see it happening.

End chapter.

Okay, so that was long, and rather pointless, but I can't write _all_ doom and gloom. They are in college. More importantly, they're in college with _Emmett_. Also, I needed to write something fun after the last chapter, and Edward and Rosalie can't always get along. Coming up in the next few chapters: Charlie's visit is shown, Bella starts to let Alice in, , we get some more Edward/Bella interaction, and we find out about what James and Jasper have been up to. Feedback, please!


	11. Chapter 11

DISCLAIMER BEFORE YOU SHOOT ME: This is NOT, I repeat NOT in any way romantic. This is a Hurt/Comfort chapter describing interaction between two characters, one of whom desperately _needs_ comfort, and one who is excellent at giving it. This was actually going to be a tiny little chapter so you could see some of Jasper and Bella's relationship, but then it kind of exploded, and I decided I would go with it. I figured my lovely readers deserved a little more insight into Bella's past. I didn't want to ruin the end of this chapter with an author's note, so I will say this now: School is getting hard. I just had a four day weekend, so i was able to write a bunch, but the first bevy of papers is due next week, and I'll be slowing down on the updates. Want to know how to encourage me to update faster? Reviews! Review, review, review!! I don't own anything, and here's chapter eleven. You should review it.

Chapter Eleven: _Ten months earlier_

She gazed out the window without seeing, so deep was she in her thoughts. The sun was setting brilliantly below a clear blue sky. Below her, in the parking lot, an old man helped his wife into his car, a woman struggled to strap her child into the car seat, a young girl celebrated her release by turning cartwheels. Cars sped by on the highway. She didn't see any of it. She _felt_ rather than heard the quiet presence come behind her. He put his arm around her shoulder, and she nestled into his chest. "Hey, Jasper," she said quietly.

He said nothing, merely tightening his arms around her and gazing out the window with her. The setting sun enveloped them in a dim light of pink and gold. They stood in silence that way for a while, she taking comfort in his presence, he mourning for the girl in his arms.

"Are you sure?" he asked, his voice little more than a whisper. She appreciated that he did not try to talk her out of it and that he respected her decision.

"No. No, I'm not. But I'm doing this." Her voice was barely audible and rough from emotion.

"Okay." They continued to stand in silence, enjoying this moment of peace amidst chaos. The last two days had been one long hell, and they seized on the brief respite.

The two got on well together. If one good thing had come from the whole mess, it had brought these two lost souls together. Neither one of them ever felt the need to chatter. Their silence was comfortable. Actually, it was nearly impossible to feel uncomfortable around Jasper, unless that's what he wanted. At those times, he could be downright terrifying.

"Marie-"

"It's Bella."

"Not until tomorrow," he countered. He was concerned that when she gave up her name, family, and home, she would lose who she was. How much of a person's identity is tied to those three things?

"I know, but I may as well start answering to it now. Develop the habit and everything."

Jasper sighed sadly, looking down at the younger girl in his arms. "I want to try to talk you out this, but I know Clearwater already tried."

"He did."

"And I want to convince you that everything will be alright, but I know you won't believe me."

"I won't. And you respect me too much to lie to me."

"I do." They were silent again. A single tear escaped from Marie's—no, _Bella's_ eye. She ignored it as it trailed down her cheek and splashed onto her collarbone. The sun had sunk completely below the horizon.

_My last night_, Bella thought. _My last sunset._ Marie Susannah Dwyer would officially die tomorrow, and no one would notice as Bella Swan drove out of town and into an uncertain future.

"You're going to break her heart, you know."

Bella pushed away from Jasper. "Is that your plan, then? Pretend like you respect my decision and won't try to coax me out of it, and then _guilt_ me over what it's going to do to my mother? You've seen her! Look at what I've _already_ done to her! Better brokenhearted than _dead_!"

Jasper was silent during her outburst. He waited a couple minutes while she fumed.

"No, honey. I didn't mean to guilt you. I just want you to be completely aware of what you're doing and everything that you're giving up. It's your choice, of course. I just want to make sure you've thought this out."

"Well, I have." She glared at him as he gazed evenly back at her. She suddenly sagged, the fight escaping her. "God, I'm sorry Jasper. This whole situation just…" She abruptly turned and walked to the bed, sitting on the edge. His eyes never left her. "Let's go over it again."

He exhaled and lay down on the bed, yanking her down to rest on his shoulder. Her fingers idly traced designs on his chest. "Your new name is Isabella Anne Swan. Your birthday is August 13. We just moved it back a month so it would be easier to remember. Your father's name is Charlie Swan. Charlie never married, so the story is that your mother left you at the police station when you were eight and never picked you up. Which works well, because if you actually tell anyone the story, they'll automatically excuse you for all your various peculiarities and _issues_." She flicked his forehead in retaliation. He chuckled. "Charlie was a lonely police officer who always wanted children but never married, so he adopted you."

"That's the official story, anyway. Right now, Charlie is the Chief of Police in Elk Point, South Dakota. It's a small town, and people would be suspicious if an eighteen year old girl came to live with him for her last semester of high school. He is telling people that he is moving to North Carolina, but he's actually going to California, and you'll be moving with him to finish school there. When you go to college, he is going to move again, once again giving a bogus forwarding address. We're taking all of these precautions to keep him safe as well as you. When people ask where you're from, you will omit the first move and say you lived in Elk Point your whole life. Keep your story as vague as possible, but work out the details with Charlie just in case. When you move for the second time and when you leave for school, Charlie will verbally tell only Clearwater and myself where you are going. It won't even go into your case file."

He continued, "You'll be given a cell phone. Here, only Clearwater and I will have your number, and we won't call unless it's an absolute emergency. You have our numbers, but once again, only to use in emergencies. To all intent and purpose, it will be your leisure cell phone, though we pay by the minute—so please don't use it for long conversations. We just have to have a means to get in touch with you quickly, considering the circumstances. We're trying to minimize the number of people who know the details of your case, so if you must call, call our cell phones, not our office phones."

He paused, unsure whether or not to continue. Bella rolled onto her stomach and propped herself up onto my elbows, prompting him to continue with a lift of her eyebrows. "As for back home…Marie Dwyer will kill herself tomorrow out of guilt and despair over what happened to her mother."

She laughed bitterly. "Funnily enough, that's the only thing about this story that's completely honest."

"Marie—"

"No, seriously Jasper." She pushed herself up into a sitting position. "Tomorrow, I'm killing Marie. Phil and Renee's daughter? Dead. And I'm killing her out of guilt and despair over what happened, and because I'm trying to protect my parents from anything else." She flopped back down, laying her head on Jasper's chest. "If a tree falls in a forest when no one is around, does it make a noise? No. It merely displaces airwaves. The noise is how our ears interpret the moving air. It's the exact same thing. If everyone thinks Marie is dead, if no one knows her anymore, is she still alive?"

Jasper let out a gusty sigh. "God, I hate this."

"Really? Here I thought this whole situation was all sunshine and rainbows and daisies."

"I see Bella is more sarcastic than Marie."

She smiled darkly. "My mom abandoned me at a police station, Jasper. Of course I'm mean and scary."

She fell silent for a moment, her fingers resuming their idle motions. "And my parents?"

He didn't ask what she meant. "You're eighteen. Your parents will think whatever you want them to think."

"I think—" She paused, considering. "I'm going to give them a letter, I think. They deserve to know what's going on. I won't tell her I'm leaving before I go, because she would try to talk me out of it, but I'll leave them both with that much peace of mind. I can't let my mom think I committed suicide. It would _kill_ her."

"It's your choice, of course."

She heard something in his tone. "You don't approve."

"Marie, I'm looking at this situation with the goal of keeping you safe. As a strategist, I know that the best way of keeping a secret is to make sure that as few people as possible ever know it in the first place. It's callous, yes, but it would probably be smarter to keep your parents in the dark. And do you really think that Renee won't fight you on this? She'll track you down immediately. If you insist on telling them that you're alive, at least don't tell them your new name or where you are going. If not for your own protection, than for Charlie's." He knew by mentioning Charlie's name, this third party hero who was risking his life for her, she would be more inclined to agree.

"They'd never tell—"

"No," he corrected. "They would never _want_ to tell. But the more people that know a secret, the better chance there is that it gets out. Do you think Layton would ask politely?"

Her voice wavered as she agreed. She burrowed her face into the crook of his neck as softly stroked her hair. He crooned no words of reassurance, knowing they would be empty words and she would gain no comfort from them. He didn't tell her that everything would work out in the end, and he didn't tell her that her parents would forgive her for running away. He simply lay there, giving her what little comfort he could through his presence and his friendship.

"I'll miss you, Jasper."

He smiled sadly. "Miss you too, squirt. You better keep up with your boxing. Next time I see you, I expect you to be able to beat me." They wouldn't pretend that everything would be okay, but they continued to plan for the future. Who knew if they would ever see each other again? Prepare for the worst, and, well, neither one of them could quite bring themselves to hope for the best, so they settled for hoping to survive.

Bella's arms tightened minutely around Jasper. They fell back into the easy silence they had before. She had just started to doze off, lulled to sleep by the safety his arms provided, when his voice disrupted the stillness again. "Have you been to see her?"

She grimaced. "Briefly. She was asleep. And oh, God, Jasper, I just couldn't stay any longer. I couldn't look at what I had done to her. I was hoping you would give her my letter."

"Okay, darling. You want me to leave so you can write it?"

Bella hesitated before pulling herself into a sitting position. "Yeah. You don't mind?"

He shook his head mutely, dropping a quick kiss on her forehead as he left the room. "I'll bring you some paper and a pen. Give me the letter tomorrow morning and Clearwater will deliver it."

"Thanks." She stood, walking back to the window. Night had fallen completely, the only light given by the streetlights below and the half moon. Her mind drifted to her new life. She had never met Charlie, the man she would be calling "Dad" until James was put behind bars or dead. She wondered how they would get along. Jasper had never met him either, so she couldn't ask him, and she wouldn't ask Detective Clearwater. The man already treated her like a child, and she didn't want to display any insecurities to add to that perception of her.

Her mind dimly registered Jasper reentering the room and placing writing utensils on the bed before exiting. She continued to gaze into the darkness of the night for a minute before abruptly turning and grabbing the pen and paper.

She paused, holding the pen over the paper. _How do you say goodbye_, she wondered aimlessly. _How do you leave your life behind with nothing but a letter? _She pondered how succinct she should keep the letter, what information she should withhold. Words would never be enough, but they would have to do until she could see them again. She lowered the pen to the pad and began to write. Unable to think of her own words, she borrowed them. Five minutes later, she was done. No tears had fallen during the course of her writing, no emotional outbursts. She simply wrote her heart, before laying her head down on the scratchy hospital pillow and sleeping, completely spent.

_I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow._

_I feel my fate in what I cannot fear._

_I learn by going where I have to go._

_We think by feeling. What is there to know?_

_I hear by being dance from ear to ear._

_I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow._

_Of those so close beside me, which are you?_

_God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,_

_And learn by going where I have to go._

_Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?_

_The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;_

_I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow._

_Great Nature has another thing to do_

_To you and me, so take the lively air,_

_And lovely, learn by going where to go._

_This shaking keeps me steady, I should know._

_What falls away is always. And is near_

_I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow._

_I learn by going where I have to go._

_-Theodore Roethke_

_Mom, _

_I'm so sorry about what happened to you. I've thought this over a hundred times, and I can't risk anything else happening to our family. I'm leaving. I'll miss you both, and I know that this will be hard on you, but I want you to be safe more than anything. I can't tell you where I'm going, but I'll be taken care of. By the time you get this letter, I'll be gone. Detective Clearwater will explain the details. Don't try to find me. I hope your surgery goes well, and I'm so sorry to have brought so much trouble down on our family. I love you both so much._

_Love,_

_Marie_


	12. Chapter 12

Roommate bonding fluff! Definitely lighter than the previous chapter. There's finally a (sort of) reduction in the tension in Room 432. I still don't own anything, and I still wish I did.

Chapter Twelve: Alice

_Slam_! I heard the loud closing of a book and a noise of frustration from Bella's desk.

"Bella?" I asked, somewhat timidly. No one had _ever_ before used the word timid to describe me, but I was never quite sure how to approach my roommate that resisted all efforts at friendship. "Everything okay?"

Bella tilted her head back toward the ceiling, as if she was supplicating the gods of homework. "Yeah. I'm trying to write this essay, and I'm just getting extremely frustrated. I bought my books used, and the essay is on how D.H. Lawrence's family life influenced his writing. But whoever had this book before me apparently had to write about his use of sexual imagery, and highlighted all the examples he could find in the book. And I don't know if you've ever read any Lawrence, but pretty much _all_ of his rhetoric is sexual imagery. This asshole basically highlighted the entire book, and it's annoying to look at."

I smiled. Bella must be frustrated. That was the most she had ever said to me at one time, if one excludes the night that Bella was half carried in by her gorgeous friend Jake (Lord, I love me a tall man), told me all sorts of childhood stories as well as insisting on sleeping _under_, rather than _on_ her bed. _The perfect opportunity to trick her into roommate bonding_, I thought.

"When's the paper due?"

"Friday."

"So take a break. I'm about to take a break from studying for econ. Watch the O.C. with me."

"Watch what?"

"The O.C." _Has she really never heard of it?_ "It's a soap opera. Edward bought me the first two seasons on DVD for my birthday, even though he claims he could _hear_ his IQ dropping every second he touched them. It's pure trashy escapism."

Bella hesitated. "I don't know…"

"_Bella_," I said, exasperated. "It's only Monday. You have _four days_ to work on your paper, and trust me, this will put you in a good mood. I love this show. Whenever I feel crappy about my life because I'm not doing well in a class or having boy troubles, I just tell myself 'Hey, at least your ex-boyfriend isn't sleeping with your mom.'"

She blinked. "Sounds…awful."

"You get sucked in, trust me."

I moved to the futon and opened my laptop, popping in the DVD. "Are you coming?"

I could see indecision written all over her face. Before she got the chance to brush me off again, I quickly said "Come on, Bella. I'm not asking to paint your toenails or curl your hair, and I'm not going to drag you off shopping just because you watched a show with me for forty-five minutes."

I beamed and began explaining what she missed in the previous episodes as she gave up and came to sit beside me on the futon. _Victory is mine._

X

"So, wait, let me get this straight. Ryan is dating the redhead, but he used to date the skinny blonde. But the redhead might actually be Ryan's adopted mom's half sister as well as the stepsister of the skinny blonde? And the skinny blonde and the mom are also stepsisters, meaning he's dated two of his adoptive sort of aunts?"

_Hmm._ It all sounded very confusing and incestuous when you put it together like that. "Yeah, pretty much."

"And the evil redheaded mother is judging her daughter's taste in men even though she slept with her daughter's ex-boyfriend and is cheating on her sugardaddy-husband with her ex-husband who she left once he couldn't be her sugardaddy."

"See? It's like you've been watching from the beginning. Now you'll probably be sneaking my DVDs away from me to watch them while I'm in class."

She laughed. "I wouldn't go _that_ far."

"It's dangerously addictive. I resisted watching the show when it first came out, and then one of my friends from high school made me watch it with her once and I didn't miss a single episode after."

"Alice?" she asked. I was extremely pleased. She was contributing to a conversation with me, and after an hour still hadn't clammed up and fled the room. "If I ever get to that point? _Shoot_ me."

I gave a delighted laugh. "Okay, fine. Pretend that you hate it. I'll know the truth the next time I put on an episode and you just _happen_ to come sit by me and watch it because you're _bored_. Don't worry though, I'll pretend to believe you."

She smiled, standing up and rotating from the waist, cracking her back "Alright. I watched a trashy soap opera. I've been a somewhat successful teenager. And now I have to go back to work."

"Alright, fine." I didn't want to press her too hard and kill the moment, but nor was I willing to let the moment go. Bella and I had just forty-eight minutes together without her freezing up and leaving the room! "Do you not have an econ midterm tomorrow as well?" Bella and I were both applying to the B-School, she for her double major in Accounting and I for my primary major in Finance, so we had several of the same pre-reqs.

"No, my teacher doesn't give midterms. We have a paper every week and then the final."

"Ew," I said, nose wrinkling. "I'd rather have the midterm."

"I know. I'd much rather study for a test twice a semester. Instead, the work just never stops. But Johnston is supposed to better at synthesizing the material."

"Hey! Don't you knock on Johann. I happen to think he's fabulous."

Bella looked at me with raised eyebrows. "Johann?"

"My professor. He's German. I don't call him by his first name to his face. I chose my classes based on the professor ten point hotness scale. Would you like me to detail it for you?"

She burst out laughing. "I had a crush on my Shakespearean Lit class first semester senior year. He wasn't an attractive man, but oh Lord, his voice…you should have heard the man read Romeo's lines."

If I had been anymore excited, I probably would have floated away. I think I may have actually been bouncing. Bella confided in me! About a teacher crush! That one definitely gets triple points. Success for the night!

"So did you take another class with him second semester?" I giggled. "Hear that sexy voice again? Maybe a class on love poetry…"

And the mood died instantly. Her face froze. She didn't answer me for a long moment.

"Look, Bella, I don't know what I said—"

"No, really, it's fine. No, I didn't take another class with him. Look, I'm meeting a friend at the gym, so I have to go." And within thirty seconds, the lighthearted ambiance of middle school confessions had disappeared, and my closed off roommate had reappeared. She left the room, and I fell back onto the futon and sighed. _What did I do wrong, this time?_

End Chapter.

Notes: Anyone who's in or has been in college, you know how frustrating it is when someone highlights the whole damn textbook. Don't do it. It's annoying. It's going to be a few days until my next update, because I'm writing the next two chapters simultaneously. Once the first one is done, however, the second should follow within a few hours.


	13. Chapter 13

Okay, it took a little longer than I expected, but on the bright side, it's my longest chapter yet and the next chapter should come out later today. This actually was originally in Emmett's point of view, because I haven't done his yet and I adore Emmett. However, it wasn't working for a few reasons. One of which there were suddenly things I had to include that lost a lot if they weren't told from Bella's point of view. Another was that Emmett does not provide a good point of view to write a story from. Don't get me wrong, I love him. In fact, I have a huge crush on him. But he sees the world as it looks and doesn't question very deeply or notice too much, and he certainly doesn't use pretty language or imagery. He's very straightforward, which I love, but I needed a more analytical point of view. So I'm sorry, Emmett fans, you won't be getting anything from his point of view except possibly the epilogue. Anyway, i own nothing.

Chapter Thirteen: Bella

Sunday night, I used the very last of my prescription. The little pills I took every night that kept me from dreaming, that kept the fears of my subconscious from escaping could no longer help me.

Monday night, I was restless. I don't know what kept me awake. Perhaps I had grown addicted to the little pills that kept the monsters at bay. Or maybe I was just too scared of their certain reemergence to fall asleep. I tossed and turned and counted sheep until, exasperated, I stopped trying and started reading

Tuesday night, I didn't even try. I boxed for longer than normal, despite the fact that my hand had not yet healed completely. I was always a little too wired to sleep after exercise. Jake took me out for ice cream at one in the morning at my request, even though I had never told him about the dreams or the medicine. I never even went back to my dorm. Instead, I went to the library and immersed myself in the biographies of famous authors until dawn came, at which point I went back to my dorm, took a thirty minute nap and pretended like I had been there all night.

Wednesday night, I slept. The dreams didn't come. I thought that maybe I was cured, that after so many months of being fought back, the nightmares stopped trying and went to prey on someone else. Maybe they simply hadn't realized that my mind was once again open to their poison and terrorism. But maybe my exhaustion had merely served as a different kind of drug.

And Thursday night, the dreams came back.

X

_I was hot, too hot. I dimly heard the sounds of screaming, but they were coming from far away. Why was I so hot? My skin was burning, I couldn't breathe._

"_Marie, Marie," a familiar voice crooned in my ear. "How nice of you to join me. I've been waiting for you, you know."_

"_James," I gasped. "Let her go. You want me, don't do this to her."_

"_Oh, I want you to be sure. But until you came, she certainly made for nice…entertainment." He licked me across the collarbone, laughing as I redoubled my efforts to escape. _

_The fire grew hotter and the screaming got louder. He leered down at me, pinning me to the ground. "I wouldn't do that if I were you, sweet Marie." His leer turned into a scowl as one of my frantic kicks hit him hard in the knee. He lifted a hand and slapped me._

"_Bella, stop it!" he snapped. "Bella! Bella!" His voice grew frantic as my struggles intensified._

_Somewhere I registered that he wasn't calling me by the right name. He knew my name. Why was he calling me—_

"Bella!" I jerked and sat upright, almost hitting Alice in the head as I fought to catch my breath. I was soaked in sweat. Just a nightmare. I focused on slowing my breathing.

"Oh my god, Bella, are you okay?"

"I'm fine," I panted as I furiously fought back tears. This was embarrassing, and sure to engender questions. The screaming had been coming from me, and it had woken Alice up.

"Wow, that must have been some nightmare. You wouldn't stop screaming and it took me a good five minutes to wake you up." Well, at least it was screaming and not sleep talking.

"Sorry I woke you up."

Alice frowned. "Please, don't worry about it." She hesitated. "Do you want to talk about it? At some point you mentioned some guy named James, but I couldn't understand anything you said."

My heart froze for a second. No, she couldn't understand me. "James, huh? I don't know. I don't remember any of it. Which sounds like a good thing from what you're saying, I guess." I ventured forth a weak smile. Alice was still giving me a hard stare as if she didn't quite believe me, but she wasn't asking any more questions.

"Well, okay then. Are you going back to sleep?" She looked at me through narrowed eyes.

I looked at my clock. Four o'clock. "No, I would have to wake up in a few hours anyway. You get some sleep, I'm going to go read in the lounge."

She shrugged, mercifully dropping the subject, and went back to her bed. I grabbed a book and slipped quietly out of the room. Settling in the lounge of the dorm, I prepared myself for a long couple of hours of reading.

X

Later that day,

I left the gym, dodging the questions of an anxious Jake who knew something was not quite right with me today. Flying down the steps outside, I ran into a solid wall that definitely hadn't been there before. Right before I hit the ground, the wall reached down and caught me, bursting out into laughter. Maybe not a wall after all. My sleep deprivation was messing with my already shaky coordination.

"Bella?" I heard. I looked up and identified Edward's friend, Emmett, who had been there the night that Alice got drugged.

"Yeah," I said sheepishly. "Sorry for running into you. Thanks for catching me." I turned to walk away, but he still hadn't let go of my arm. I gave it a tug.

"You work out at the campus gym?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Well yeah, I mean, we go for free and it's convenient. I don't want to pay for a gym membership and have to drive somewhere else."

"Oh, I've just never seen you hear before, and I spend a lot of time on cardio and weight training. You do pilates or something?"

My temper sparked. "_No_. Just because I'm a girl does not mean that the only exercise I can possibly be interested in yoga and pilates, and let me guess, your next guess was going to be step aerobics or jazzercise?"

He laughed. "You're funny. Actually, I was going to guess kickboxing. You look like you could beat a body up all angry like that. Where are you headed now?"

"Dining hall."

He grinned. "No, no, no. I'm meeting Alice, Edward, and my girlfriend for lunch. Come with us."

"No, really, I'm fine eating at the cafeter—" I tried to protest, but he simply grabbed my arm again and started dragging me off. I could have put up a fight, but I didn't want to make a scene and I doubted that I would win—Emmet is huge. Plus, he seemed like the kind of guy who would laugh off my protests and become more determined to get his way. I let him pull me like a rag doll for a few seconds before trying to shake my arm out of his grasp.

"Okay, I'll come. Now will you stop manhandling me?" He stopped and turned, giving me a suspicious look. He scanned my face as if to look for signs that I was lying and planning on running at my first opportunity. He apparently didn't find one, because he abruptly dropped my arm and kept walking.

"Well, come on then," he called over his shoulder. _Sheesh_.

I followed him to a small restaurant right off campus. He slung his arm around shoulders, ignoring my grimace. We went to a booth in the back.

"Alice, Edward, honey bun!" he said, leaning down (and taking me with him) to give a smacking kiss to the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. "Look who I found loitering around and dragged over here. Bella, this is my girlfriend, Rosalie Hale."

Alice looked at me in surprise. "Bella, you're eating with us?" I knew she was shocked and probably a little hurt—I had rejected all of her efforts to include me with her friends.

"Trust me, when he says he dragged me here, he means it literally," I said, rubbing my upper arm giving a tight smile to Rosalie in greeting before glaring at Emmett. I didn't want Alice to wonder if my rejections had been personal.

"Well," she said with a warm smile, "we're glad that you're here." She scooted toward the wall, pulling Edward over with her and forcing him to make room for me in the booth as Emmett slid in next to Rosalie. I felt a pang of guilt. Alice was a truly kind person, and entirely too forgiving.

"Bella Swan!" I heard a voice call. _What now?_ I thought. Clearly the universe wasn't interested in giving me a break today. I turned to see a vaguely familiar looking blonde guy approach our table.

"Um…" I said stupidly, unable to remember how I knew this guy.

"Mike Newton," he said, flashing me an easy smile. "I got you pegged with a Frisbee the weekend before classes started." He glanced around the table, acknowledging everyone with a nod.

_Ah_, I thought. "Right, you gave me directions to the gym."

"Sure did. So, Bella Swan, since this is the first time I've seen you since, and I would hate to go another two months without the pleasure of your company, would you like to join me for dinner tonight? Pick you up at eight?"

I froze. What the hell? "Sorry, Mike, but I have to work. And I'm not really interested in dating right now."

He looked disappointed briefly before smiling again. He winked and said "Well, maybe at our next chance meeting I'll convince you. Until then, Bella Swan." He turned and walked away. Redfaced, I looked back to my group, who had been unashamedly listening to our conversation.

"_Bella_," Alice fussed, leaning around Edward to look at me. "You should have said yes! He was cute!"

"Alice, please," Edward answered for me. "She didn't want to go out with him, so she said no. Plus, if she has to work, she has to work."

"Bella doesn't have a job," she told him scornfully, turning to scold me once more.

"Actually," I interceded before she could get started, "I do. I went and interviewed for a job at the library. I train this evening, and start working the ten at night to four in the morning shift tonight." I think the only reason they gave me the job was because I requested that particular shift, which no self respecting college student wanted to take. I ignored Alice's suspicious look.

Rosalie gave a visible shudder. "That's awful. I hope you won't be doing that shift for very long."

I forced a smile. "We'll see. I'm new, so I don't really have a lot of room to negotiate." Not that I would try even if I did. I wanted the night shift so that I would be truly exhausted when my head hit my pillow. Now that I didn't have medicine, I had to try alternate methods of warding off the demons that plagued me in my sleep. The fact that it just afforded me the perfect excuse for avoiding a date didn't hurt either, not that I had counted that among my original reasons. The waiter then came to take our orders, effectively cutting off the conversation. I took the opportunity to bury my head in the menu, since I hadn't yet decided what to order.

As the waiter walked away, Rosalie leaned toward me. "So, Bella, since this is the first that we've met, I feel obligated to ask how your first semester of college is going? Are you enjoying classes?"

My eyes widened. I wasn't expecting to be the center of attention. Rosalie intimidated me. "Um, classes are fine. They're a lot of work, but they keep me busy."

"Oh, really? What classes are you taking?"

"Well, I'm a double major in English Lit and Accounting." I glanced around the table. Every single person had their eyes focused on me. I noticed once again the vivid contrast between Edward's eyes and hair. "So I'm taking Analytical Writing, AmPo, Econ 101 with Johnston, and a couple of Gen Ed requirements."

"AmPo?" Edward asked. Now that I wasn't caught off guard or distracted by a drugged roommate, I could properly appreciate how beautiful the man's voice was. Between the looks, the voice, and the obvious intellect, he really had the whole package.

"Oh, sorry! That's what the Lit nerds call it. American Poets," I answered. "Dickinson, Cummings, and a bunch of others."

"Ah."

Emmett spoke next. "You have Econ with Johnston? Tuesdays and Thursdays at one?"

"Yeah."

"I'm in that class! Why haven't I noticed you before?"

"Emmett, Econ 101 classes all have like four hundred people in them," Alice said scathingly.

He laughed. "Excellent point, Fat Al." Cute nickname. He turned his attention back toward me. This was getting unnerving. "Well, I'll have to start sitting next to you."

Oh, crap. Deflection time. "I sit on the second row." Not only was that true, but it seemed like the exact thing to say to deter Emmett from ever sitting by me in class. And I was right. He made a face and recanted his previous statement. _Victory._

The food arrived, thankfully, and from there the conversation strayed away from me and spun off into gossip about people I didn't know, places I had never been, or family members that I hadn't met. I spaced out for a while until I heard my name. I passed the salt down the table, jumping at the feel of Edward's hand on mine as he took the saltshaker from me. Had he felt that spark of electricity as well, or was I imagining things, I wondered.

"So, Bella, where is your family from?" Edward asked. As much as I enjoyed the sound of his voice, I didn't enjoy it when it was asking me questions like that.

"Elk Point. It's a small town in South Dakota. I doubt you've heard of it."

He laughed. "Can't say I have. Were your parents disappointed when you moved so far from home to go to school?"

Was this necessary? I realize they knew everything about each other, but I wasn't a part of their little circle. "No. My dad got transferred so he's only an hour and a half away."

"What about your mom?" Emmett asked.

"_Emmett_!" Alice hissed.

Jasper's advice flitted through my mind: "When lying, Marie, it is best to keep as close to the truth as possible. It'll be easier to remember and avoid getting trapped in your own lies. Also," he added with a teasing smile, " you're such a terrible liar that it's likely that'll be the only way people believe you."

"I haven't been in contact with my mother for a while. I have an adoptive father." Jasper would be proud. Nothing but the truth in that statement.

"Oh." Emmett paused awkwardly for a moment before launching into some story about a teammate. I breathed a sigh of relief, glad to have the attention diverted away from me. Nothing like a personal question followed by an awkward response to kill a conversation. I focused on eating my food, listening to the conversation with one ear. They had moved onto to some male cheerleader that apparently was crushing on Alice.

"No," she was saying stubbornly. "I'm sorry, but I want a real man. I'm not dating someone that dresses up in stretchy pants and has a megaphone. I want a man that hunts or plays sports and can win in a fight." The idea of Jasper and Alice as a couple wandered through my mind.

"He's a cool dude," Emmett was insisting. "You may as well go out with him a couple times before you decide he's a pansy. Come on, Alice. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, and all that."

"Emmett, I—" she cut off abruptly, looking at him incredulously. "Did you just say 'gather ye rosebuds'?"

Edward laughed. I shivered, hoping no one noticed. "I was wondering that myself."

"It's Herrick," I spoke up. "Though I'm surprised you knew that, Emmett." I had learned over the last hour that Emmett was a Physiology major with aspirations to go to physical therapy school, though he was taking two women's studies courses because he lost a bet. "Although," I said, "I suppose if every teenage boy knew one poem, that would be the most appropriate."

"Why is that?" Emmett asked. "I didn't know who wrote it. I just remembered it from some class I guess. What's it from?"

I smiled. "It's by Robert Herrick, and it's called 'To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time.'"

He grinned. "Sounds promising."

"Oh, it is. To summarize:" I leaned forward, flickering my eyes between Rosalie and Alice, "Ladies, go have lots of sex and get married now, while you're young and beautiful, because soon you'll be old and ugly and no one will want you."

Edward burst out laughing beside me, quickly followed by the rest of the table. Emmett and Edward began to engage in a lively conversation about whether or not women would be impressed enough by the fact that they had poetry memorized to overlook the meaning if they were to learn the poem. I privately doubted that any man had enough game to get a woman by telling her she needed to have sex with him right then before she got ugly, but if anyone could pull it off, it would be the two beautiful specimens at the table with me. I dropped a dollop of ketchup on the table and reached toward the center to grab a napkin.

Edward's eyes dropped to my hand, before looking back to Emmett. He then did a double take, gently grabbing my hand from where it was wiping up the ketchup.

"Holy hell, Bella, what did you do to yourself?"

I furrowed my brow, confused. "Pardon me?"

"Look at these hands." He turned my left hand, showing the table. _Ah_. My bruises. They had been there so long that I had forgotten that boxing had given my hands a near permanent yellowish cast where my hands were too tough to bruise black and blue like at the beginning, but too soft not to show any sort of wear and tear. Thankfully, he had grabbed my left hand instead of my right, which was pretty swollen today. "What the hell is this from?"

"Um, I box a little bit."

"You box?" He laughed. "You hadn't struck me as the type."

"Uh, oh," Emmett chuckled. "You're in for it now, Eddie."

My eyebrows narrowed. "Yes, Edward, I box. Not in a girly kickboxing way, thank you Emmett, but in a legitimate, I could probably beat the shit out of you way. You know why I learned? So people wouldn't be able to touch me without my permission. So I suggest you put my hand down before we learn how good I am in a real life setting."

His eyes widened and sparkled with amusement and something else I couldn't quite identify. He dropped my hand, squeezing my fingers lightly first.

"Bella," Rosalie declared solemnly. "I think I just fell in love with you."

I blushed. "Thanks, Rosalie. Any physical manifestation of that love, and I'll box you instead."

Emmett was nearly shaking with laughter at this point, even as he wiggled his eyebrows up and down as sleazily as he could and asked if he could watch that fight. I blushed ,embarrassed at both being the focus of attention and the nature of Emmett's commentary. Rosalie laughed as she slapped the back of his head and ordered him to shut up.

They were difficult to watch. An odd pairing, to be sure, but they were both so beautiful and they got along so well. It was easy to see that they simply _worked_ together. While I had no particular romantic designs on anyone, I felt a familiar cloud descend as I wondered if I would ever be free of James to pursue a relationship with someone. I tuned back into the conversation. Apparently Edward had pissed Rosalie off this time around.

"Thank you, Edward," Rosalie was saying icily. "Tell us idiots, please, is there anything you _can't_ do?"

Edward grinned. "I can't shoot a gun or waterski."

"I could teach you," I blurted. I gaped, horrified, clapping my hand over my mouth and feeling my face heat up as I flushed. "Um, forget I said that." I was furious with myself, and with that traitorous alliance between my mouth and my subconscious that forced a sentence like that out of my mouth.

The whole table looked at me with interest. "You could teach me to shoot a gun, or to waterski?" Edward asked, his eyes alight with that same gleam that I couldn't recognize earlier.

_Panic_. I immediately tried to backtrack. "Um, shoot a gun. I can't waterski. But it's not like I'm an expert with guns either, so really I'd ask someone—"

"I'd love for you to teach me."

_Well. Shit._

End Chapter.


	14. Chapter 14

Alright, here's the next chapter. And, I'm not going to make you wait for the shooting lesson! I stole and altered some of Stephanie Meyer's lines in this book, both from Twilight and New Moon, and I still don't own the characters.

Fourteen

I woke up in high spirits Saturday morning. I knew exactly what I was going to do this morning. After eating breakfast and getting ready for the day, I drove over to Alice and Bella's dorm. After a few sharp raps on the door, Bella swung it open, gazing up at me blearily.

"Edward?" she asked through a yawn. "Alice went to meet her history project group for breakfast, I think. Sorry."

"Oh, I'm here for you," I responded. She looked up at me, obviously confused, shaking her head as if to clear the cobwebs of sleep from her brain. A warm, protective feeling spread over me. She looked so innocent, so unlike the irritable spitfire from lunch yesterday. "You said you would teach me to shoot a gun. Let's go." I had been thrilled when she had offered to teach me how to shoot, much to her chagrin.

"_Now?_" she demanded.

"Well, you can get dressed first, obviously. It's ten o'clock. I thought you'd be awake." Really I had just been eager to get over here. When I first met Bella, she spoke all of a sentence to me. For weeks after, I had nursed a quiet grudge against her because she was obviously hurting my sister's feelings. But then, the night that Alice got drugged, she turned into Florence Nightingale and taken care of her, bossing Emmett and me around. And yesterday, Emmett had dragged her to lunch, and I really _noticed_ her. She wasn't dressed up or wearing make-up. Quite the contrary, she had just come from the gym, and was still a little flushed and covered in a light sheen of sweat, tendrils of hair escaping from her ponytail. She was _hot_. It was hard _not_ to notice the sight of those slender thighs extended from her reasonably modest gym shorts. And I hadn't been the only one. Mike Newton (I scowled at the thought of that putz) had come up to our table and asked her out. I was pleased when she refused, until she said that she didn't date. Is that why she refused Mike? Not because she wasn't interested, but because she wasn't dating? I was surprised by my jealousy. That is not an emotion that I was accustomed to experiencing.

My fascination had grown throughout lunch. She was well-read, seemed to have diverse interests, and continually surprised me. I never would have thought she was a boxer, yet her bruised hands corroborated her story. And when she had snapped at me—I never knew that I could get so aroused by a woman yelling at me. So when she mistakenly (and it had so obviously been a mistake) offered to teach me to shoot, I jumped on the chance. If I had asked her out, she would have refused. However, since she had offered to teach me to shoot, even if it had been a total accident, I wasn't going to let the opportunity slide. So here I was on a Saturday morning, hoping to catch her in a moment of weakness.

"I started my job at the library last night. I got in at four-thirty," she said with a glare. Oh. I felt guilty now. But not that guilty.

"Oh. Sorry about that. But since I've already woken you up, you may as well get dressed and come. Please?" I wheedled. God, could I debase myself any more? I wondered if there were a possible way for me to sound a little more desperate for her presence.

She gazed at me for a long minute, obviously contemplating my evisceration. Maybe I shouldn't encourage her to handle weaponry today…

"Fine. Give me ten minutes," she said, slamming the door in my face. I guess that would have to work.

Eight minutes later, she opened the door again, dressed in a t-shirt and old jeans that probably gave Alice a heart attack on a regular basis. Her hair was scraped up into a messy ponytail, and she was holding a case.

"What's that?" I asked, pointing to the case.

"Our guns."

I was absolutely floored. I had expected to rent a gun at the range. Yet here she stood before me, holding a case with—did she say weapons, plural? What kind of girl did Alice share a room with? I recovered after a minute or so, shaking my head and tugging the case away from her. "Okay, let's go. I'm parked downstairs."

She followed. "I can carry the case myself, you know."

"Oh, I don't doubt it for a minute," I responded cheerily. "But what kind of gentleman would I be if I let you do that?"

She rolled her eyes. "You going to open my car door for me, too?"

"Absolutely," I assured her, following my response with the action. I expected another roll of the eyes. Instead, her cheeks colored a brilliant red. _Interesting_. She had a pretty blush, I noticed. It gave color to her otherwise translucently pale skin. I threw the case in the backseat, and walked around the car. When I got in, she directed me to the interstate and gave brief directions. I wondered if she went often. We drove in silence for a few minutes as she rested her forehead on the window. She was obviously still waking up.

"So what are you going to teach me to shoot?" I asked her presently.

"Um, either a 4" Diamondback or an S&W Kit," she answered absently.

"Sorry, I don't speak American Hunter," I replied dryly.

She rolled her eyes, looking away from the window for the first time. "Revolvers, princess." Ah. That I understood. I grinned. The girl had fire. She continued, "A Colt Diamondback DA with a 4" barrel and a Smith and Wesson Kit Gun from the sixties, before they went to shit. And if you _did_ speak American Hunter, it wouldn't help you much considering most people hunt with rifles, not handguns. No shoulder support on a handgun and long distance accuracy is more difficult."

I laughed. This Annie Oakley, boxing aspect of her personality seemed so at odds with the blushing, shy girl that hated to be at the center of attention. I couldn't begin to figure her out, and I was normally so good at reading people. "Remind me never to piss you off. Do you hunt often?"

"No, Charlie does. Take a left here."

"Who's Charlie?" I asked, taking a sharp left without slowing. Her shoulder hit the window. "Sorry bout that."

"My dad," she said, in a tone that made it clear this line of conversation was over, and turning back toward the window. I was disappointed. I wanted to know _more_.

"Is that it?" I asked as we passed a billboard pointing us toward a range.

She burst out laughing. Had I ever heard her laugh before? I would happily make a fool of myself much more often (albeit I had no idea what I had said this time) if it would coax that sound from her lips. "Edward, that's a driving range, not a shooting range. We're going to shoot handguns, not hit golf balls." Oh. I'm an idiot. "Take a left at this next light, and it's about four buildings back on the right." I followed orders, and we pulled into the parking lot. I grabbed the case out of the backseat and followed her inside.

"Bella Swan!" the man with a ponytail shouted cheerfully from behind the counter. I wondered how often she came here. "You haven't been her in a month! Have you been cheating on me with another range?" He looked at me with interest.

She smiled. "No, Stan. Just been busy with school. This is Edward, by the way. Princess wants to learn to shoot a gun." Okay, that nickname _had _to go. She took the case from my hand and swung it onto the table. Stan turned around and busied himself pulling out small boxes. She walked over to a rack next to the counter and pulled off two pairs of safety goggles and two headsets, tossing them on the counter next to all the cartridge paraphernalia that Stan had set out. She pulled a wallet out of her pocket.

"No, no, no," I insisted her, grabbing her wallet out of her hands. "This was my idea. You don't even want to be here. I'm bankrolling this party." She hesitated briefly, before agreeing. I turned to Stan and handed him my credit card. We grabbed the equipment and walked into the booth that Stan unlocked for us.

"Alright," she said briskly, walking over to a panel on the wall and pressing a few buttons. A large board with a target dropped down and rolled toward us, stopping about fifteen feet away. "You're new at this, so we're going to start close." She began loading the larger of the guns, handing it to me when she was done.

"So is this how they do it in South Dakota?" I teased. "Girls night out at the gun range on a Saturday night?"

She cast me a withering look. "Yes, Edward, that's exactly how they do it in South Dakota," she responded sarcastically, rolling her eyes. I noticed that she did that often.

"So how do you know how to do this?" I asked. "Not that it isn't incredibly cool."

Reddening, she loaded her own gun, deliberately avoiding eye contact with me. "Um…my father. He's a policeman and wanted to make sure I knew how to defend myself."

"Oh, really? That's pretty cool. Must have made dating pretty difficult in high school." Was that subtle enough that she wouldn't notice that I was trying to get her to tell me about her love life? Or was it too subtle, and she wouldn't take the bait?

"Oh, um, yeah. He's not overly protective, but I guess it would be intimidating. But I never dated in high school."

She never dated? Ever? That was more than a little difficult to believe. I brought the gun up, as if I were about to shoot.

She straightened and walked around me, critiquing my stance. "Feet a little wider apart, and lock your elbows. Your grip looks good," she said, her tone businesslike and matter-of-fact. "Okay, put your goggles and your headset on, and then take a shot." I obeyed both orders as she did the first herself.

_BANG!_ I jumped at both the noise and the recoil. I scanned the target. No mark anywhere. _Damn_. She chuckled.

"No one hits the bulls eye their first time, Edward," she chided me. "Okay, I wanted you to get the feel for it first. This time, remember that it's an old gun and it lists slightly to the left, so you need to adjust for that. You know what the recoil feels like now, so brace yourself and prepare for that. If you take a deep breath right before you shoot as well, and hold your breath when you actually pull the trigger, your aim will be steadier." Right. I followed her orders and shot again.

_BANG!_ I wasn't any less surprised by the noise and the recoil, but my body didn't rock back as much, and I managed to hit the very edge of the target.

"Good job," she encouraged. "It took far more than that when I first learned for me to hit the target."

"You go," I suggested. "I want to see you shoot."

She shrugged, hitting the panel on the wall again. The target sped back about fifty feet. I winced. That was a blow to the ego. She readjusted her headset, raised her gun, and shot off three rounds. She brought the target back to its original distance, and I could clearly see all three holes in the middle. Damn. She really knew what she was doing.

"Are you for hire?" I asked her. "If I knew someone I wanted dead, could I just pay you to do it? I don't really understand why you're in college. You have a promising career as an assassin." I expected another contemptuous glare, but she once again surprised me, breaking out into laughter.

"No, I'm really not that impressive. You're just new." She gave me a few more pointers. I shot until I ran out of ammunition. One hit near the bulls eye, two hit on the edges of the target, and the others hit nowhere near.

"Okay, you have the basic technique down. Now it's just a matter of practice."

For the next half hour, we alternated shooting. I steadily improved, and after I landed several near the bulls eye, she moved my target back. The more time I spent around Bella, the more time I _wanted_ to spend around her. I was utterly intrigued. I couldn't reconcile the sarcastic spitfire, the encouraging teacher, the antisocial roommate, and the blushing ingénue. I couldn't help but jump at one point when she stuck her foot between my legs and nudged them further apart to correct my stance. I had never been so affected by a girl before. I was absurdly happy that she seemed to have no experience with men, though I had no clue how to convince her to give me a chance.

When we eventually ran out of ammunition, she took the guns, cleaned them, and put them back in their case. We walked out, putting the headsets and goggles back.

"Later, Bella," Stan called as we left. She waved. His voice sounded like I was hearing it through a tunnel. Even through the headsets, my ears were sore from the noise.

"So, Bella," I said, eager to stay in her presence, to get to know her in a personal setting without headsets on. "I kept you from breakfast. Why don't I buy you lunch?"

"Um, I should really go do homework," she said.

"Wow, you seem really responsible. You don't procrastinate much, do you?" She shook her head. I smiled.

"So do you really expect me to believe that you worked a dull as hell ten to four shift in the library on a Friday night when no one goes in, and didn't already finish all your work?"

She opened her mouth, and then shut it. I had trapped her, and she knew it. "Fine."

I smiled the entire walk back to the car.

End Chapter

And there is your first hardcore Edward/Bella bonding! Two chapters today, as promised, and there will be another one late tomorrow, depending on reviews!!! This story is on 52 story alerts, which is really flattering, and thank you all, but it's a little confusing to be on 52 story alerts and to only get about five reviews a chapter. So please, give me feedback!


	15. Chapter 15

Ah! I'm so sorry this took so long. I started to write it but then I got some major writer's block. So I started writing chapter sixteen instead, so on the bright side, sixteen should go up tomorrow. I also wrote a short little Narnia one shot while I was trying to get re-inspired. Anyway, this one is from Bella's point of view. I don't own anything.

Chapter Fifteen: Bella

_Crap, crap, crap,_ I thought to myself, softly beating my head in a steady rhythm against the Circulation Table. I couldn't believe what an idiot I was being. But however hard I tried to avoid it, I officially had fallen for Edward Cullen.

I had expected lunch to be miserable. He was nice, and funny, and _so cute_, but I had no desire to sit there and lie or fend off personal questions for an hour, fighting the rising feeling of guilt in the pit of my stomach. But it wasn't like that at all. Maybe he sensed that I didn't want to talk about high school or my family, or maybe the topics just didn't come up at all. The conversation had flowed like water, as we talked about everything from movies to politics to hobbies. Edward wasn't religious, but he was spiritual, whereas I had very little faith in anything, a product of a mother who was Catholic one week and a Scientologist the next. We discovered that we had frighteningly similar tastes in music, and completely different tastes in literature. He told me about how he beat up Laurent, and I corrected his grip so that he wouldn't hurt his hand so badly the next time. I learned that Alice was a regular Nostradamus. The Cullen wealth came partly from family money and partly from their father's work as a doctor, but mostly because Alice was some sort of financial savant, and could predict the stock market like no one else

Maybe I was just jealous. Edward had everything I wanted. He had a fabulous family that he _didn't_ have to run away from to keep them safe from an obsessive stalker, he was smart, attractive, wealthy, and had fabulous friends…But it wasn't just all that that made me like him. It wasn't just his surface personality traits either. They certainly didn't hurt, but more than his sense of humor it was the obvious love he had for his family and Emmett. It was the way he clearly admired his father and adored his mother. His eyes glittered with anger when he spoke about Laurent, and softened with love when he spoke about his sister. Edward told me he composed music for the piano, and his eyes glowed with happiness. And in that two hour period, Edward got to know me as well, the real me, separately from my past or my lies.

And now I was pining after my roommate's brother.

I was an idiot.

He made me_ laugh_. It had been too easy to forget that I wasn't just a normal college freshman with him. Jake and I got along perfectly well. He was my best friend, and every moment I spent with him, the holes in my life filled in that much more. But with Edward…it was like the holes weren't even there. And now I couldn't stop _smiling_, like a giddy little fifth grader whose first crush tells her that he likes her butterfly clips.

I rested my forehead on the desk. Well, I would just have to avoid him from now on. I couldn't be with him for obvious reasons, and I'm sure that he had a long line of girls eager for the title of Edward Cullen's girlfriend. Girls who came with a lot less baggage than I did. Girls who looked more like Rosalie and less like plain-jane Bella Swan. I was surprised at the pang of sadness I felt at the thought.

I sighed and looked around the library. I took this job so that I would be properly exhausted when I went to bed at night. I hadn't counted on how much uninterrupted _thinking_ time it would give me, especially at one in the morning on a Saturday night when no one that could avoid it was in the library.

I got up from my chair, wincing as I stretched my stiff muscles. I took the stairs up to the third floor, and wandered over the fiction section. I didn't think I could concentrate on anything too dense tonight, but I needed _something_ to distract me. I grinned as my eyes ran over the Harry Potter books, choking back a laugh.

"_So they have this race every year, and they both get really competitive during it. They pull out all the stops. Anyway, it was the year that Alice had just gotten her hair cut off for the first time, like it is now, and was styling it into that spiky mess." I nodded. "Anyway, to handicap her, Emmett handcuffed her to chair, and she ended up splitting her forehead open trying to win, and she had to get stitches in her forehead. It looks fine now because a plastic surgeon did them, but for those first few months, between the short black hair, the green eyes, and the massive scar on her forehead, the entire school called her Harry Potter. She didn't speak to Emmett for a solid two weeks after one of her friends wrapped Scotch tape around her favorite sunglasses."_

I snorted, picturing my stylish roommate with a black pointed hat, carrying a broom. Weirdly enough, the image worked for her, though that could probably be attributed to the fact that Alice could pull off _anything_. I passed over Harry Potter, selecting _The Phantom Tollbooth_ instead. Perfect. A nonromance and nonhorror book from my childhood. Comfort reading.

By the time four o'clock rolled around and my replacement arrived, I had garnered all the resolve I could. I was going back to the cold Bella who ignored her roommate. If that's what I had to do to avoid falling in deeper with Edward Cullen, than that's what I would do. I would once again be the Bella who avoided making friends, or even polite acquaintances, because that's what I had to do to keep the people in my life safe. I had made my decision, no matter the personal pain that it caused.

Which only goes to show that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Because Sunday morning at 11:00, I walked in to my little room in the gym, and Emmett MacCarty was waiting for me, with a pair of gloves and a shiteating grin, as he promptly informed that I would be joining everybody for a game of MarioParty 2 that afternoon. Whether I liked it or not.

I was doomed.

End Chapter


	16. Chapter 16

So I upped the rating, mainly because the language gets coarse in this chapter, and will get a lot coarser in later chapters as things heat up. But please, no complaining about that—most college boys do occasionally throw the f-bomb around. Next chapter will probably go up Friday or Saturday. I still own nothing. Please, please, please review!

Chapter Sixteen: Jacob

I was officially in a panic. When Bella hadn't shown up as usual for boxing on Friday afternoon, I didn't think anything of it. Her hand had been hurting her, and she needed a break anyway. I figured I would see her on Saturday.

When she didn't show up on Saturday, I felt a small knot of worry settle in my stomach as the anxiety started to gnaw at my peace of mind. Two days. She was probably sick or something, I convinced myself.

Then on Sunday, I waited anxiously for a short little brunette to come rent some gloves from me. When no one came, the knot bloomed into fear. She had made no contact with me, and she just stopped showing up at the time she always came.

"_He's going to come for me, Jake. Right now, as we speak, he's looking for me. This is why we shouldn't be friends, why it's safer for you to avoid me. He used my mother to get to me. Once he figures out who I am, where I am, he'll do the same to you. And he _will_ come. I'm safe right now, or as safe as I can be, but it's only a matter of time. Sooner, later, I don't know, but eventually, he'll come for me."_

Fuck, fuck, FUCK. And now she had disappeared. I had no idea where she was, and no way to get into contact with her. I went by her dorm on Sunday night, and no one was there. Again, on Monday morning, and no one was there.

"_Bella?" I whispered. It was late. We had driven to the beach and were looking at the stars. It was a moonless night, both clear and beautiful , but chilly, and she shivered as she huddled closer to me. "Do you really think you're going to die?"_

_She was silent for a minute or two. "It's better than the alternative. If it comes down to a choice between your safety or mine, or Charlie's safety or mine, I know what I'm going to choose. I worry about you, you know."_

_I felt my heart swell with affection even as I silently promised her it would never come to that. This little slip of a girl had the devil himself biting at her heels, and she was worried about me. I had never met anyone with such incredible courage and selflessness. The amount of spirit in her didn't fit the package. "Well," I said, standing up and pulling her to her feet. "If you're going to die anyway, you may as well spend the time you have left really living." And with that, we ran into the ocean fully dressed, splashing and tackling each other until our teeth were chattering and the morbid thoughts faded into nothingness. _

I went into the campus diner to get a coffee. After a caffeine fix, I had full intentions on going to the library and finding the phone number for the police department where Charlie worked. Maybe he had talked to her in the last few days. And that's when I saw it. A brown head sitting in a booth with four others, a blush on her cheek and shoulders shaking with laughter. I felt the knot of anxiety condense and bloom into a fierce throb of anger. I strode over, grabbing her uninjured wrist and yanking her out of her seat.

"What the hell do you thi—Jake??" Her wrist slacked and she stopped struggling when she realized who was pulling her. A few seconds later she began tugging again. "Jake, what the hell are you doing?"

I yanked her into a corner by the entrance to the kitchen where there were no tables or people to overhear us, ignoring the concerned looks her friends were giving us. "Bella, where the hell have you been?"

She yanked her wrist away. "I've been busy! What is _wrong_ with you?" Seriously? Exasperated, I ran an angry hand through my hair.

"What's wrong with _me_, Bella? What's wrong with _me_?" I hissed. "Bella, I'm used to seeing you every single day at the gym. Given what I know about your past, can't you understand why I might have been just a little fucking worried when you suddenly don't show up for four days in a row? Fuck, Bells, I even went to your dorm a couple times to make sure you hadn't been abducted and you were _never_ there." I couldn't believe I had worried like that when she was obviously perfectly fine, and having a grand old time. I felt like an idiot, but I couldn't dispel the anger. I watched her face change as recognition dawned, swiftly to be replaced by remorse.

"Oh, God, Jake, I'm so sorry." Her eyes filled with tears. Well, if that didn't make me feel like a fucking ass. The anger swiftly fell away at the first sight of moisture in her eyes. I cupped her face with my hands, wiping away the first few tears as they fell, and then yanking her into a hug. I wrapped her up in my arms, inhaling the scent of her hair, grateful that she was okay and well. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that her entire lunch group was staring at us with interest. The smaller guy was glaring at me through narrowed eyes as—was that _Emmett MacCarty_ elbowing him and laughing?

"The ginger that you're eating with is giving me a death glare," I murmured into Bella's ear.

She laughed and pulled away, a blush staining her cheeks. "Oh, he is _not_."

Oh, he definitely was. Redhead had the hots for Bella. "Yeah, okay, if you say so. Who are these people anyway? I recognize Alice, but since when do socialize with her or anyone in public?"

"Since Emmett found me outside the gym one time." She scowled. "He has now come in the last two days and yanked me out for friendly bonding activities and meals."

"Yeah, let's talk about your boxing," I said, frowning and wrapping my hand around the back of her head, lightly rubbing the back of her neck as she tilted her head back into my hand. Ginger leaned toward Bella's midget roommate, talking furiously, even as his eyes didn't leave Bella and me. "Where the hell have you been during my shift?"

She sighed and cast her eyes down. I used my hand's position to rotate her head back up to where she was facing me again. "Bells, what's wrong?"

"I ran out of my pills."

"Your pil—oh." Her sleeping pills. She told me about the nightmare that she had every night. "So what have you been doing?"

"_I dream, Jake," she had told me. I didn't know where she was. Her eyes were empty and vacuous, her mind far away in some distant land I had never seen, that I wished _she_ had never seen either. "I dream of the fire. I dream of his hands around my waist, on my thighs. I dream of my mother screaming as James whispers in my ear that she's screaming for me. Sometimes he's on top of me, and other times Mom was dead before I got there. But no matter what, I'm always too late, and she always dies." She gave me a grin that looked more frightening than happy. "So how do you like having a mental patient for a friend?"_

_I grinned right back at her, ignoring the nagging heartache that always accompanied these discussions. "Why, I absolutely love it, thank you. Adds excitement to an otherwise dull existence. Normal people are for losers."_

Her eyes met mine tremulously. "I got a job working the night shift at the library, so when I go to bed, I'm so tired that I don't dream. I went to the gym in the mornings the past two days because I've been too worn out and my reflexes too slow by the evening."

"Bella, that's fucking dumb. I know you think you're some kind of super woman, with your hardcore boxing and marksmanship and 'Bella Swan stands alone' attitude, but you need sleep just like the rest of us."

"I'd be tired either way, Jake," she snapped. Her voice softened. "It's not exactly restful having nightmares like the ones I get." She gazed up at me, begging, pleading for me to understand. And, whipped fool that I am, I can't help but help her to feel better.

I sighed, pulling her into a hug once more. She didn't deserve this shit. She had the biggest heart of anyone I knew, and she had been forced to fake her death and flee her home and live a life filled with fear and nightmares. I felt tension flee my body as she nuzzled into my chest. "You should sell these hugs, Jake. They're too valuable to give away for free like this."

I chuckled. "Oh, I do. I have a patent pending and everything. Ugly girls get charged ten bucks and fat men, fifteen. That way I can give them to the pretty girls for free." She laughed, her face vibrating against my chest. I pushed her away reluctantly. "Well, you better go back to your friends before they come to save you. I don't think they're happy with me for abducting you." She rolled her eyes.

"Okay, Jake. I'll come visit you at the gym tonight, even though I boxed this morning." Giving me a small smile, she turned and walked away.

"You do that. And Bella?" I grabbed her wrist. "You worry me like that again, I'll kick your skinny little ass."

She grinned. "Yeah, that's right. You and me, we'll have a throw down, take bets and everything."

I laughed and waved her off. As glad I was that she was finally getting past her fears and making friends, I couldn't stop the stab of jealousy when I saw how she interacted with Ginger. When she sat back down, he reached out and brushed her hair out of her face, obviously asking if she were okay. She nodded and gave him a shy smile back, a shy smile that told me absolutely _everything_ I needed to know about how she felt about Ginger. She would deny her feelings for him, she would try to fight them, but I knew her better than that and I could see them. I was already losing her. And I couldn't even fight for her when I was the one encouraging her to live her life to the fullest, when I was the one who scolded her for letting fear rule her life. I had hoped that she would take my words to heart and give _me_ a chance to make her happy. I may as well have pushed her into Ginger's arms. And yet, seeing the tender way he looked at her, seeing her blush as her eyes sparkled happily, I knew that she was no longer mine. And I was fucking _happy_ for her. Because whatever Bella needed from me, that's what I would do, and that's who I would be. Because she deserved whatever happiness she could find in a world that had never treated her fairly.

_Fucking hell._

End Chapter


	17. Chapter 17

Hello, readers! Sorry this chapter took me so long—the first twelve or so chapters pretty much wrote themselves in order, but now my muse is jumping around from week to week in a way that makes no sense for the story. So this chapter isn't as good as I would like it to be, but if I were to wait to write it how I really want to, it would probably take about three more weeks. On the bright side, it's a long one. Anyway, I still don't own anything. This chapter is dedicated to BlindingFirefly.

Thoughts on Jake: Several people have told me that they adore my Jake, but that they had never liked SM's Jake. I think Jake is a seriously underrated character, and I love him. Yes, he was trying to steal another guy's girl, but it was a little more complicated than that. Take away the fact that Jake and Edward are natural enemies, that Jake had to put Bella back together after Edward _broke_ her, and that to be with Edward, Bella is (by Jake's standards) going to have to die, and I think he would have been much more reasonable about the whole situation. Remember, he did come back in the beginning of BD to make Bella happy. I think if you take away the supernatural aspect of the story, Jake would have been much more gracious about Bella and Edward's relationship.

Chapter Seventeen: Bella

_Two weeks later_

I tripped over the entrance to the dorm, wincing as my elbow hit the doorframe. I walked over to the mailboxes downstairs and fumbled through the combination for my dorm room's box. Three tries later, I got it open. Exhaustion was messing with my already precarious coordination.

_Let's see_, I thought, stepping on the elevator. A couple of girly magazines for Alice, a notice for some bar party, and a pack of coupons. Nothing terribly exciting. I walked in our room and tossed the magazines and the party invitation on Alice's desk. She looked up.

"Thanks—_shit_, Bella! You look awful!"

"Thanks," I replied dryly, throwing myself onto my bed and burying my head in my pillows.

I felt the bed indent beside me as Alice sat down. "Bella, you can't keep working the hours you do. You are wearing yourself down, and you're going to hurt yourself falling down the stairs or something."

"Alice," I said, my voice muffled by the pillow. "Full mental awareness will not prevent me from falling down a staircase. Have you not noticed the staircase conspiracy against me?"

She let out a frustrated little sigh. "Look, this isn't healthy, okay? Not physically, emotionally, or academically. I know you don't care about the first two, but what happens when you take your exams? I know your test scores can't be as high. There's no way you're concentrating properly in class."

I flipped over onto my back, staring at the ceiling. "My homework grades more than make up for that, except in my lecture halls."

"That's not the point! The point is you're being an idiot! I'm not going to apologize for trying to look out for you! You need to get some sleep. If not for yourself, than for Edward. You go to the gun range with him, and I would rather not lose my brother because you accidentally pointed the gun the wrong way from sheer exhaustion."

I rolled my eyes. "That's hardly likely."

"Well, it doesn't matter. I'm taking matters into my hands."

I raised my eyebrows. "Oh, really, Alice? What are you going to do?" I challenged.

She smiled devilishly. Okay, at that point I started to worry. My roommate was nothing if not clever, committed, and absolutely diabolical.

"I _did_ tell you that I ran into Mike Newton the other day, right? And he asked me for your number? I told him we didn't have a landline set up in the dorm, but I'm sure he would be _very_ interested to know that you spend all of your nights at the circulation desk in the library. You might find yourself with a visitor every night."

My eyes widened as I shot up. "Alice!"

She merely leaned back onto her hands and raised her eyebrows.

"You are _vicious_," I breathed, awed. I had to give her credit. It was a good plan. I took a deep breath. I hadn't planned on getting into this now, or ever, for that matter, but I knew at this point that Alice wouldn't accept any explanation but the truth. She had already dismantled my excuse of needing the money with a dismissive "Please, you never shop and you have a meal plan. What exactly is it that you need money for?"

"Look," I began, wetting my lips nervously. "You're not stupid. I know you've figured out that I have, well…some sort of a past." She nodded and cocked her head, curious. "And I get nightmares from it. And I used to take sleeping pills, but I'm out of refills, so that's why I work the hours I do. So when I do sleep, I don't dream."

Her forehead creased. "I thought it might be something like that. You got the job right after you had that awful dream…"

"Yeah, and I talk in my sleep, too. Trust me, if I quit my job, _you_ will be the one getting no sleep. So, give me a break, please?" I begged. There was also a part of me that feared for what I would say on the nights when the nightmares _didn't_ come, in light of my swiftly growing feelings for my roommate's brother. There were certain things that no one needed to know.

Alice pursed her lips. "Fine." From the glint in her eye, I knew the subject was dropped only temporarily. Alice wasn't giving in on this one, but she was giving me a respite.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

I looked at her incredulously. "Seriously?" Talk to her, my roommate, with her perfect family and her perfect friends with their perfect families?

She exhaled. "Fine, I get it. Stupid question. Mysterious past, dark forces rising, apocalypse nearing, and all that. It just seems like you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders, and I wish I could help you in some way."

"Oh, Alice." I deserved neither her friendship not her compassion. "Trust me, if it's ever safe for me to tell you, than I will. But there's a reason why I've tried to avoid being your friend, and it's simply not _safe_ for you to know. Though it's a moot point now, I guess. I've put all of you in danger by association, and I hate myself for it."

She stared at me with hard eyes, before abruptly breaking into tinkling laughter. "Well, don't beat yourself up about it. We didn't exactly give you a choice. Maybe we like you enough to risk it."

I groaned and fell back into my pillows. "Your first mistake," I muttered darkly. "So what are you doing tonight?"

Alice rolled her eyes at my radical change in both tone of voice and topic. "Very subtle, Bella," she replied scathingly.

I shrugged. "A girl can try, anyway." I rolled off the bed and stretched, my back cracking in multiple places. Alice winced.

"Where are you going?"

I ambled over to my desk, perusing the different titles of books on my shelves. "Um…" I answered distractedly. "I thought I'd come back and here and grab a blanket, and then go lay on the quad and read before my shift. It's such a nice day outside, and it's going to get cold soon. And I'll probably go get dinner and bring it to the gym to eat with Jacob later. I haven't been to visit him in a few days." I selected a compilation of Austin's works, noticing Alice pause deliberately for a second in my periphery. "What?"

"Jacob?" she asked, her voice a little too normal, a little_ too_ unconcerned. "What about Edward?"

I frowned. "What about him? We don't have plans for tonight."

She huffed. "No, but you obviously like him. Why are you going out with Jake?"

Shit. "Alice, Edward and I are just friends. We aren't a couple, and trust me, we never will be."

Hands at her hips, she turned and glared at me. "Is there something wrong with my brother?" she demanded. She paused thoughtfully. "Well, other than the fact that he never brushes his hair, is a major control freak with OCD, and is a cocky little bastard. But still, you can't claim not to like him when I've _seen_ the way you blush around him." I blushed furiously. "Ha! Like you are right now!"

"It's a lot more complicated than that, okay? For one, he doesn't like me the same way." She started to interrupt, but I forestalled her, not wanting to hear what she had to say on the subject. "And consider how hard I fought against being friends with you. There's no way I'm going to start dating someone, even if it _were_ an option."

Her eyes softened. "Bella, that's no way to live. And honestly, I think he would risk it."

Doubtful. "Whatever, Alice. Anyway, Jake is my best friend. It's not like I'm going on a date. I'd be hanging out with him even if I did have a boyfriend." I grabbed my blanket and wallet. "I'll see you later."

No response. Oh, well. I hoped she wouldn't tell Edward about our conversation. He had become a good friend to me, and I didn't want things to become awkward between us. Laughing inwardly at the very idea that he was as interested in me as I was in him as I exited the room, I walked briskly across to the quadrangle. I lay down on my blanket and pulled out my book.

Half an hour later, I gave up in frustration when I realized that the first book I tried to read had a character named Edward, and the second an Edmund. Seriously? He was infecting my every thought, and I couldn't even escape him through reading. And while thinking of vibrant green eyes was infinitely preferable to thinking of a cold gym and bouquets of orange roses and gardenias, it was more than a little frustrating. Sighing, I dropped my head down to the blanket, using my arms as a pillow.

X

_Tap. Tap._ I jerked into consciousness, flipping my body around and jerking my arm straight into the gut of my assailant. My assailant with familiar broad shoulders and laughing eyes.

"Oh, my God, Emmett! I'm so sorry! That was just a reflex, and I can't believe I hit you! I—" I cut off at the sight of him doubled over with laughter, rather than pain. I sat back onto my heels. "Well, anyway, I'm sorry," I muttered sheepishly.

"Good Lord, Bella. Paranoid much?" He could hardly breathe for laughter. My embarrassment was quickly fading to be replaced with ire.

"Well if you hadn't _snuck up_ on me while I was sleeping, then maybe I wouldn't have _hit_ you," I snapped. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes. I hadn't meant to fall asleep, but sleep deprivation was definitely catching up to me.

Emmett's chuckles died down. "I hardly snuck up on you. You were just really out. Did you know you talk in your sleep?" he asked. "You said Edward's name…" he informed me, eyes dancing merrily.

Horrified, I flushed. Wildly looking around for anything to say, to distract him with, my eyes fell on my book. I held it up triumphantly. "Gosh, Emmett, jump to conclusions much?" I said sarcastically, feigning a bravado I very much did not feel. "Did it occur to you that I may have been dreaming of the Edward that appears in the book I just finished reading? Oh wait, I forget, you're an illiterate footballer and probably have never read an Austen book in your life."

He grabbed the book out of my hands and flipped through the pages. His brow furrowed. "Hmph," he grumbled finally. Glancing back at me he added "And I resent the implication that I never read. I'll have you know that I am Jane Austen connoisseur."

"Oh, really?" I asked sarcastically, not bothering to hide my unbelief.

He fixed a steady stare on my face. "At my time of life opinions are tolerably fixed. It is not likely that I should now see or hear anything to change them." My jaw dropped as I snatched up my book and flipped through to the page with that particular quote on it.

"Holy crow, Emmett, you got it word for word. Are you a closet lit major? First Herrick, and now Austen. I'm officially impressed. You really are a connoisseur." Who the hell was this guy that from a distance looked like your average jock, but then quoted Jane Austen and seventeenth century poets and doubled majored in physics and architecture?

He laughed. "Hardly. I just have a good memory. It helps a lot in school considering football doesn't give me a lot of time to study." He plopped onto his stomach beside where I was sitting, propping his face up on one hand and looking at me mischievously. "But it was a relevant quote. And that opinion that I'm fixed in, Bella? It was Edward Cullen's name you were saying in your sleep, not Edward Ferrars."

"What the hell? What is it with you people today? Is it harass Bella day? First Alice, then you. There's nothing going on between Edward and me. Now can we _please_ change the subject?" Once in a day was enough. Once in a year was enough. This couldn't happen.

"Fine." He pulled himself up into a sitting position and raising his eyebrows. "Tell me why you never mention your mother."

And before I could stop it, something inside of me snapped and Jasper's lie rose unbidden like bile and forced itself out of my lips. "My mother abandoned me in a police station when I was eight, and Charlie Swan, an officer, adopted me, okay? I don't talk about her because it's more than a little painful. Am I allowed my privacy now, or is that not suitably sad enough for you?"

I immediately cringed with guilt and horror. I never meant to use that lie. It felt so dishonest, so wrong, to let people believe such a horrid thing about my mother who never did anything but love me with her whole heart and give me the very best that she could. And now Emmett's eyes were wide as he gazed at me with pity, pity that was groundless and undeserved.

"Bella-"

I jumped to my feet and gathered my things, thoroughly disgusted with myself. "I have to go, okay? Just forget about this whole conversation, alright? It never happened."

He nodded wordlessly as I gave him a terse wave goodbye and stomped off, still hating myself for what I had just said. I made my way to the gym for the second time that day, glaring daggers at anyone who didn't move out of my way immediately. I marched up to the desk, dumping my crap on it. "Gloves. Now."

Jake looked up from his accounting homework. "Bella, hey! I was wondering when you'd drop-"

"Gloves."

His eyebrows twitched, but he slid the gloves across the table. I felt bad for being so brusque with him, but blowing off steam was my main priority. Ten minutes with a bag and a pair of gloves and I would be a new woman.

Fifteen minutes later, my hands were bruised, my face was streaked with tears and sweat, and I felt immeasurably better. I wiped my face off and went back into the little lobby, tossing my gloves down on the table as I walked around the desk and threw myself on top of Jake's legs. His arms tightened around me as I snuggled into his lap and tucked my head into the crook of his neck. "Hi, Jake."

"Hey, Bells," he said quietly. He didn't ask if I was okay or if I wanted to talk about it, because he knew I wasn't okay and that I wouldn't. Jake was exactly what I needed him to be, and right now I just needed comfort.

A few minutes later, I pulled myself into a sitting position on his lap, giving him a watery smile. He smiled back, tenderly brushing an errant strand of hair behind my ear. "I'm going to clean up, okay?" Jake nodded, and I jumped up and went to the bathroom. Stripping off my clothes and ducking into the shower, I was finally able to think rationally about the last half an hour. I had expressed reservation to Jasper about that particular lie in my backstory. I asked_ why_ I needed a story so damning, that would incur so much judgment on my innocent and undeserving mother. He had placed his hand under my chin, pulling my head up to make eye contact. "Bella, doll, I know it's unfair. But it's a good story. If people think that, then they'll be very uncomfortable. And uncomfortable people don't ask questions."

And, of course, his original explanation that people would excuse any issues or peculiarities I had if they thought I was a Safe Haven baby. I snorted with laughter as I rubbed my body with scalding water. I hadn't planned on going to the gym, so I hadn't brought any soap, but I was content just to rinse the sweat off my body. Fighting the temptation just to collapse on the shower floor and let the water wash over me (because who knew what diseases there were on the floor of the gym shower), I turned off the water, standing in the shower for a few minutes and shaking off excess water. I didn't have a towel with me, and I was unwilling to step into the comparative cold of the bathroom.

I took a few deep breaths, gathering the courage to walk back out. I knew Jake would never demand an explanation of my behavior, but I would give him one all the same. He gave so much of himself to me. I didn't want to take his friendship and comfort and give nothing in return, even if all I could offer was an explanation. I stepped out of the shower, threw my clothes back on and left to go talk to Jake.

When I turned the corner back to the lobby, I was surprised to see a tall student with a recognizable shock of bronze hair with his back to me, talking to Jacob. Jake's fingers drummed against the counter as he tersely answered some question I couldn't hear, a sure sign that he was irritated. I stepped forward a few more steps and but still couldn't understand Edward, whose back was still facing me. I could, however, hear and see Jake's reply as he rolled his eyes and wrote something down in his notebook.

"Why, yes," he was saying, giving Edward a cursory glance. "And between the red hair and the green eyes, you look like a fucking Christmas tree, but _I'm_ not saying anything." And with that, he looked right back down to his homework and continued to ignore Edward.

I clapped my hand over my mouth, trying to repress a snort of laughter. "Jake!" I exclaimed, causing Edward to jump and swing around to face where I stood.

Jake looked up at me and grinned. "Hey, Bells. How was the shower?"

I glared at him with no real anger. "You're an ass, you know that right?" I turned to Edward. "Sorry about him," I apologized. "I've tried to teach him manners, but it appears to be a futile gesture." Jake chuckled from behind the desk.

Maybe I was just paranoid or hopeful from my conversations with Alice and Emmett, but I couldn't help but notice the way Edward's eyes widened and gleamed appreciatively as they swept over the way my clothes clung to my still-damp body. I shivered slightly, and then blinked as a sweatshirt hit me directly in the face.

"Thanks, Jake." I slipped it on, and looked at Edward. "So what are you doing down here, anyway?"

"Ah…" He looked between me and Jacob before quickly saying "I talked to Emmett and came to check on you. He wouldn't tell me what happened, only that you were upset and he was an idiot, and he's sorry."

I sighed. "Look, Emmett said something and I completely overreacted. It wasn't a huge deal, and my anger was completely unwarranted. I'm going to apologize to him later."

"Are you sure you're alright? You know you can always talk to me, right?" He gazed at me with concerned eyes. I responded with a small smile and a nod. "You want to go grab something to eat before your shift at the library?"

I shook my head. "Thanks, but no. I'm picking something up for Jake and me to eat here."

His eyes flicked to floor—was that disappointment? I needed to stop reading into his every gesture. It would drive me to insanity sooner rather than later. "Alright. Well, I'll see you later, then."

"Bye, Edward." He walked toward the exit past me, and I stepped to the side to let him by right as he stepped to the side to walk around me. We both stepped back the other direction before breaking into awkward laughter. I stood still the third time, as he walked around me, nodding shortly at me.

Jake eyed me as he propped his feet up on the desk. "Dinner, then?"

I smiled. "Be back in twenty minutes."

X

I fell into my chair behind the circulation desk after reshelving some books, opening my e-mail on the computer. I heard the gate to the area behind the desk swing open again after me. "Sorry, employees only behind the—" I looked up. Emmett.

"Hey," I said quietly, looking down at my hands.

He pulled up a chair next to me and turned it around so he was straddling it backwards. "Edward said you wanted to talk to me?"

"Yeah, Emmett, I just want to apologize for overreacting earlier today. Your question definitely didn't deserve that kind of…" My voice trailed off as he held up a hand to stop me from speaking.

"Bella, if anyone should apologize, it's me. We all know that you don't like to talk about your family, and I shouldn't have pried. I told Rosalie what an ass I was, and she almost throttled me."

I laughed uncomfortably. "Well, I'm sorry about that, too." We sat in a slightly awkward silence for a few minutes.

"Bella, do you know how Edward and I met?" he asked.

I looked up at him. "Yeah, football camp in high school, right?"

He shook his head. "Nope. That's where we got to be really good friends. But we met years before that."

I leaned back, crossing my legs in chair. "Okay…"

"I don't drink liquor for a reason, Bella, and it's because my father is a recovering alcoholic. He's been sober for ten years, but I can still remember what it did to my family."

I frowned. Emmett was so normal, so self-assured, that it was hard to imagine his family ever having problems.

He looked down at where his fingers interlocked on top of the chair's back. "My mama's a tough southern woman, and none too happy when my dad started spending more and more of our family's money on bourbon. But she put up with it, shielding me and my four sisters from his temper. He got mean, but never violent, until one day, when I was eight, he hit Mama right in the face." I gasped. Emmett continued, a small smile playing on his lips. "Well, Mama, she didn't like that too much. So she hit him right back and told him she wasn't going to tolerate his behavior anymore. She took me and the girls, packed us all bags, and we left that night. She told him that when he got sober and stayed that way for six months, he could have his family back."

He continued, making eye contact with me. "We went to the Cullen's house. Esme and my mom had been sorority sisters years before. From what I understand, they were friends from college, but hadn't really kept in touch. We lived about an hour and a half away from each other, but we couldn't afford to stay at a hotel for too long, and Mama didn't want to go to my dad's family. So until Mama found a job and we got an apartment, I shared a bedroom with Edward. That was for about two weeks."

I felt guilt rise within me. I had done nothing to earn this trust. He was exchanging confidence for confidence, but I hadn't given him anything.

He suddenly smiled. "But there's a happy ending. It took my dad two years, but he sobered up, and we moved back in. He hasn't touched the bottle since, and he's learned to appreciate my ma." His eyes bore into me. "I'm telling you this, Bella, because I want you to know that no family is perfect. I know that you have issues beyond what you're telling us, and what happened with your mom sucks. And I know that your problems are worse than ours were. But we _are_ here for you, and we want you to know that you can trust us. None of us have had perfect lives."

I nodded mutely. He stood up and stretched, before leaning down and dropping a kiss on the top of my head. "Alright, Bella, I'm off to bed." He grinned. "Normal people can't survive on the hours you keep, you know that, right?" He ruffled my hair and strode off.

I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the desk and burying my hands in my hair. _Well, that was unexpected._

End Chapter.

I stole a quote from a t.v. show. Ten points to the reader who can locate it and name the show! And even if you have no idea, you should still review!!


	18. Chapter 18

A/N: Sorry about this ridiculously long wait. My muse went skipping off to happier places, apparently. On the bright side, I'm now about halfway done with a little one-shot entitled "With a Mind to Marry." I'll let you know when it's posted. So here is Chapter Eighteen! Please don't hate me, because you _will _see the scenes that are referenced in this chapter later. There isn't a lot of action, but it's still important.

Chapter Eighteen: Alice

I glanced over at Edward. Forty-five minutes in, and he still hadn't said anything, sitting silently in tense stillness, save for the agitated hand that periodically ran through his hair. Frustrated, I bit my lip, mindlessly wondering when I had picked up that habit.

"Stop staring, Alice," he said curtly.

_Victory_. "Any particularly reason why you're refusing to speak today, brother dear?" I asked sweetly. It was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, and we were driving home the seven hours because Edward couldn't bear to go five days without a car. I didn't complain about a seven hour drive instead of a one hour flight because he had already promised me custody of the Volvo for Black Friday, but I was still very envious of Emmett and Rosalie, who were much more sensibly flying to Emmett's.

"I'm tired and trying to relax. This is pretty much the only time I can do that, so stop being an obnoxious little sister and let me drive in peace."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, I'm pretty positive that Bella is even more messed up than you right now, if it makes you feel any better."

His hand jerked and the car veered sharply into the other land. "Shit, Edward!"

For the last two weeks I had been watching my brother and my roommate carry out one long, elaborate dance. A stolen glance here, a dark blush there, soft eyes and affectionate smiles, a casual touch that lasted just a little too long—it was enough to drive a person mad. Until finally, Emmett and I planned an intervention while Rose looked on in part amusement, part disgust, and everything apparently came to a head last night.

Except my roommate, in all of her frustrating, obnoxious stubbornness screwed everything up.

Idiot.

I frowned, not for the first time wondering what exactly had happened between the two of them. I suppose it was unkind of me to assume that Bella was the one who messed things up instead of my brother, who I would be the first to argue could be a total asshole, but in all fairness, Bella was the one who was absolutely terrified of letting anyone into her cloak and dagger life, not my brother. Bella was the one afraid of loving people.

_I heard a hurried scrabbling at the lock. Two tries later, just as I was standing up to help, the door swung open. "Bella?"_

_She glanced at me briefly, before clamping her upper teeth firmly down on her bottom lip, refusing to let any words escape, or perhaps trying to bite back tears. Her eyes, already bloodshot from exhaustion, were red rimmed and glassy. Her hair was a disaster, as if someone (such as my brother) had slid his hand into her hair without regard to the ponytail. Her lips were swollen as if she had been thoroughly kissed. She looked harried to the point of insanity._

"_Oh, wow, Bella, are you okay?"_

"_Fine," she spat at me. I cringed back from the anger in her voice. Something, obviously, had gone wrong._

_Then she deflated, completely wilting before my eyes, tears spilling over. "I'm fine," she said weakly. And then without another word she grabbed her schoolbag and went to the library to work her shift. _

And other than a clipped "Happy Thanksgiving, Alice" this morning before I left, those were the last words she spoke to me. And any imbecile could clearly see that there was nothing "fine" about her.

But maybe that was the key to getting Edward to talk. If nothing else, my brother had a huge protective streak to exploit.

"Look, Edward, all I'm trying to say is that Bella seemed really frazzled last night before she went to the library. I was actually pretty concerned about her. She shouldn't be walking around alone at night anyway, let alone when she's upset. Especially since she was the only one on staff, it being right before a holiday and all." Okay, so I was slightly evil.

His lips thinned, and he tensed imperceptibly, but otherwise he gave no reaction. _Very impressive, brother_, I internally applauded him.

He cut a glare over at me my way, as if he was reading my mind. "Don't think I don't know exactly what you're doing, Alice."

"Pardon me?" I asked innocently.

"You are trying to goad a reaction from me, and it _won't_ work. If Bella wants to tell you what happened last night, than she will." _It won't work? That's what you think, brother dear._

A few minutes passed in silence.

"She's working at three in the morning _by herself_ in an empty library!" my brother exploded. I jumped, and then grinned. _Never bet against Alice, _I thought victoriously.

"Yeah, one time when Jake was over I tried to convince him that he should meet her at the end of her shift and walk her home, but he flat out refused. Said that she was a big girl and could make her choices, and if she was going to be an idiot and take that shift, then it was her own fault if she got kidnapped, and he certainly wasn't going to lose sleep over it," I said impishly. I was doing some serious editing to Jake's actual statement, of course, but Edward didn't need to know that.

Edward clenched his teeth, tightening his hands around the steering wheel. _Too easy. Knowing my tricks doesn't make you immune, Edward._ "I'm still not going to tell you anything, Alice."

"_Edward_," I whined. "I'm your _sister_!"

"Half," he responded waspishly.

I shrank back against my seat. He was seriously pissed if he brought up the half-sibling factor. Neither one of us ever mentioned it. We both considered Carlisle to be our father in every way that mattered. I sat the rest of the car ride in silence.

X

Around 7:45, Edward slowed down as he finally pulled into our long driveway and drove up to our home. Our parents were both waiting. Mom, who was usually the epitome of poise and composure, was practically bouncing up and down with excitement at having both of her offspring back home. I smiled. This semester had been difficult on her as she suffered from an empty nest for the first time in almost twenty-one years.

As soon as the car pulled up and I opened the door, I was engulfed in my mother's arms. I squeezed back just as tightly. "Hi, Mom," I said, my voice muffled in her shoulder. I had inherited my lack of stature from Esme.

Dad walked up and tugged me away from my mother, smiling fondly as he opened his own arms for a hug.

"What am I, just the chauffeur?" Edward grumbled, the smile on his face belying his amusement. Of course the comment was unnecessary—as soon as Mom had released me, she flew around the car to hug my brother.

The men went to the trunk and grabbed the suitcases from the back. Edward came home with one. I came home with three, because I was swapping out my autumn clothes for my winter ones. Bella had simply shaken her head in half awe, half abject consternation with each suitcase I filled.

We followed Edward and Dad to the house, my mother's arm around my shoulder as we made small talk about my semester. Esme, in true motherly form, wanted to hear everything there was about my classes, my professors, friends that I had made, and Bella. We went into the kitchen where Esme started heating up food for Edward and me while the boys carried the suitcases upstairs.

We were still chattering away when the boys came back downstairs. Dad walked up behind me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. I leaned back against him.

"So how's choir going, Ali?" Tone-deaf to the point of hilarity, my father had never missed a single one of my choir concerts growing up.

"Oh, it's good! Our winter concert is in a couple weeks. You should come down for our spring concert, though. We're doing Beethoven's _Missa Solemnis_. It should be really good."

I could feel him smile. "I'll work that into my schedule. E-mail me with the dates."

"I do wish you hadn't quit choir, Edward. It would be so nice to hear you two sing together again. You'd make this washed up old lounge singer proud," Esme said, handing us both plates of pasta.

Edward rolled his eyes. "We've gone over this, Mom. Choir's at the same time as the only orgo sequence offered. I'll get back into next year if it fits with my schedule." Edward and I had sung a duet every year in our high school concert, and every year Esme practically went through a pack of Kleenex.

Esme turned toward me. "So Alice, any boys catch your eye this semester?" My father chuckled and released me, moving to lean against the kitchen counter.

"No, Mom." I smiled mischievously. "But you should ask Edward what's going on between him and my roommate."

"Alice!" Edward exclaimed. Esme immediately turned toward Edward.

"Edward? Are you dating Alice's roommate?"

"No, Mom," he said tightly, shooting me a death glare.

"But he'd like to be!" I sang, completely ignoring him. I was breaking a cardinal rule here. Edward and I were a team. Our parents were generally cool, but we protected each other against their hovering, deflecting attention when need be. However, desperate times… He couldn't tell _Mom_ to shut up, after all.

Edward gave me a look that promised retribution before reluctantly turning to look at Esme. She had been bothering him for the last year and a half about working too hard and not making time to meet someone special. It was really unfair of me to get her hopes up like this when I had no idea what was going on, but I was so unused to being out of the loop that I was pulling out all the stops.

"Ed—"

"So, Mom," he cut in, before she could get a word out about the situation. "Have you spoken to Mrs. McCarty about Friday plans?"

Carlisle laughed. "Nice deflection, son."

Esme smiled. "I suppose I'll let it slide, just this once. Don't think I'll let you leave on Sunday without giving me details, dear. But to answer your question, the McCartys are going to come late Friday morning, to have lunch with us, and of course, watch football. I expect Emmett will want to play a game or two as well. I must say I'm excited to meet his girlfriend."

"Rosalie's incredible," I informed her. Edward rolled his eyes.

My mother frowned, her brow furrowing delicately. "Didn't she spend Thanksgiving last year with Emmett's, as well as most of Christmas break? Does she not want to visit her family?"

I glanced up at Edward. "Rosalie has a…_difficult_ family situation. I don't know all the details, just that she doesn't really get along with her mother. I've never even heard her mention her father."

"Oh, how sad."

"Well," my father said. "I know that you two must be tired from being on the road all day. Why don't you unpack and get some sleep?"

"Alright, Dad." Edward hugged both of our parents, before going upstairs. I waited a couple minutes before following, hoping to avoid getting pushed down the staircase.

I made it safely to my room and started to unpack. While unpacking, I thought over what I was about to do. I unpacked slowly, gathering my courage.

When I finally ran out of reasons to delay any longer, I took a deep breath and left my room, making my way back downstairs. The house was dark and silent, but I knew that my father would be awake.

I knocked on Carlisle's office door, pushing it ajar.

"Come in," he called. I slipped inside. He pushed aside the medical journal he was reading, smiling. "What's up, sweetie?"

I bit my lip. This was going to be difficult.

"Dad?" I began hesitantly. "I need a favor."

He frowned. "What's the matter?" I shifted my weight nervously from foot to foot. He didn't miss it. "Alice?"

I took a deep breath. "It's not me. It's about my roommate, Bella."

End Chapter


	19. Chapter 19

Here is Chapter Eighteen—You will see SOME of what is referenced last chapter, but not all of it—and you'll probably hate me the more for it. But it will all come in time, I promise!

So this story is now on 79 story alerts—which is awesome, and makes me really happy. But I am still only averaging about seven reviews a chapter. So I have decided to stop asking for them. I do love reviews, and I suppose that putting this story on story alert is enough vindication for me that people are enjoying the story. So if it pleases you, review, and I will love you for it. But if not, I hope you are enjoying the story nonetheless.

Side note: I posted my one-shot, With a Mind to Marry.

I own nothing.

Chapter Nineteen: Edward

I maneuvered my car into my parking spot at University Apartments. Walking inside, I promptly opened a beer and flung my body across the couch. Now that I was finally alone, I felt free to let out a frustrated sigh that I could never utter in Alice's presence without subjecting myself to hundreds of questions.

Bella Swan. Possibly the biggest enigma I've ever dealt with. Far more difficult than my differential equations class.

I snorted. Emmett would probably say that was my biggest problem. I could almost hear his voice in my head telling me that as long as I was comparing women to math problems, I would never figure them out. I had to admit, his approach with women seemed to work for him, but Bella and Rosalie were like apples and oranges.

The last week had been hell. First Alice in the car on the way home (I scowled involuntarily as I remembered what she claimed Jake had said—he did not deserve her affection), then Esme, who tried to approach me again on Saturday about Bella, then Carlisle, who wanted to make sure that I was "being careful." _That_ was a talk that I had no desire to have again. I had slowly grown more and more irascible throughout the break. My one day of freedom was Friday, when Rosalie and the McCarty's came over. If anything, watching Rosalie thoroughly trounce Emmett in basketball had distracted everyone from the topic of my love life, or lack thereof.

I opened another beer. Drinking alone wasn't usually my style, but I needed to unwind after spending all day in the car. After dropping Alice off at her dorm, I drove half an hour to pick Emmett and Rosalie up from the airport. As Rosalie had been forced to share a bed with the most neurotic of Emmett's sisters, the couple was aching for some "quality alone time." And knowing the two of them, I was in no doubt as to what exactly "quality alone time" meant. I was only glad that they chose to have it in her bedroom rather than in Emmett's. Our walls were thin.

But thinking about Emmett's extremely successful love life was not helping my mental state any. He had had it so easy. His eyes met Rosalie's from across the room of a party, and they started talking and quickly hit it off. She played hard to get for all of two weeks, and now, almost two years later, they were talking about houses after graduation. Life should be so simple. _What the hell did Bella want from me?_

I knew she was attracted to me. I knew she wanted me. What was her problem? I had no idea what went wrong on Monday. It started out so well.

I briefly wandered if Jake was the problem, but quickly dismissed the thought, firstly because Bella had never seemed to have any interest but friendship in him, but secondly because when I thought of him fierce jealousy like I had never experienced erupted. _And I do _not _look like a Christmas tree!_

I looked down at my watch. Ten-thirty. Was that too early to go to sleep? My homework was done, and I highly doubted I'd be able to concentrate on schoolwork anyway. I threw the beer cans away and went to brush my teeth. While I was brushing my teeth, I backtracked and removed the beer cans from the trash can and put them in the recycling bin in order to avoid the wrath of my terrifying midget sister, who was extremely concerned with the world we were leaving future generations. Emmett, of course, thought she was ridiculous and would throw away recyclable items just to watch her dig through the trash in her designer clothes.

I finished brushing my teeth and sprawled out over my bed, closing my eyes and trying to go to sleep.

Three hours later, I was still awake. Damn beer. Falling asleep when completely shitfaced is easy. Falling asleep when buzzed? Nearly impossible.

I got up and angrily paced around my room like a caged tiger. The two things I usually did to alleviate stress were closed to me now. I refused to go for a run at one in the morning, and composing would hardly help my situation. An image of brown eyes and pale skin flitted through my mind.

I let out a frustrated expletive. Usually when I had problems in my love life, I simply ignored them and went on. And I had tried, but Bella actually meant something to me, and I was thoroughly addicted to her. I didn't think anything could make me stop wanting her, but damn it, I hated having to be so careful with her. If she would only _talk_ to me, we could work this out.

I cursed in my head, and threw myself back onto the bed, covering my head with the pillow. _Tomorrow_, I thought. _I _will_ find her, _I resolved, _and we _will_ talk tomorrow._ And mind made up, I finally drifted into an uneasy sleep.

X

_It started out as a simple melody, a fragment of a tune that both pleased and intrigued me. I played with the fragment until it evolved into a fuller harmony, at which point I abandoned my chemistry notes and began to write. My fingers ran over imaginary piano keys as I wove harmonies and a descant into the piece. An hour later, my chemistry lay abandoned, immersed as I was in the music. Across the top of the page, I scribbled the words "Bella's Song."_

_I called Alice and informed her that I wouldn't be dining with her because I would be in the music building all evening, shouting the same message at Emmett as I left the apartment. I turned the volume off in my car so that I could better focus on the song in my head as I drove. _

_When I arrived at Carlson Hall, the building was empty. Not many people were there the Monday night before the Thanksgiving holidays. I went into my favorite practice room, the one with the upright piano instead of a keyboard as well as decent lighting, a couch, and a table I could write on, and set the handwritten music in front of me. I started to play, pleased that it sounded even better aloud than in my head._

_I subconsciously registered the opening and closing of a door, but immersed in the music, I paid it no mind. The tune changed from slowly moving chase with an almost militaristic descant (a wisp of a girl, at a gun range?) to a delicate dance, as I periodically stopped to add a harmony here or a countermelody there. I added an unwritten bridge that led the song into a slower section before the tune escaped me and I stopped playing altogether, the song very much incomplete._

_Quiet applause from the entrance. I whirled around._

_Bella. She was radiant, standing in the doorway with her hair a mess, wearing a blue blouse that set her flawless skin off perfectly. _

_She walked toward me. "That was beautiful. I can't believe you wrote that." My heart swelled with warmth. She leaned over my shoulder to look at the sheet music and gasped. "Bella's Song?" You wrote that for me?_

_I shrugged. "For, about, I don't know. You were certainly my inspiration though."_

"_Oh," she said quietly. She smiled bashfully. "I've never inspired a song before. I'm honored." She turned her head, her face only a few inches from mine. I looked into her eyes, and my hope grew, for tenderness and affection were swimming there. She straightened and I followed suit, stepping from behind the piano bench. _

"_So," she began, looking down at her feet and then shyly back up at me. "Do you think you'll finish it soon? I'd love to hear the entire thing."_

_I took a step closer to her and took her hand in mine. She didn't pull away, even as her breathing quickened. Emboldened, I leaned down closer to her face._

"_I hope so, Bella. But that depends on you. The thing is, I don't know how the story ends."_

_And with that, I finally claimed her lips with my own._

End Chapter


	20. Chapter 20

Sorry guys—another one of _those_ chapters. I swear, pretty much everything that I haven't revealed in this chapter or the two before will be revealed in the next two. I'm also sorry that it took so long to post—this chapter was actually finished a couple days ago, but hasn't been cooperative. I haven't been able to log on, review, get story alerts, or anything.

A big thank-you to Leon McFrenchington for plugging this story. I still own nothing.

Chapter Twenty

Charlie Swan merges onto the interstate, hardly noticing the sudden reduction in speed of almost every surrounding vehicle—hazard of being a cop. He has an inkling feeling that Bella hates riding in the police cruiser, but then again, Bella hates anything that draws attention to herself, with good reason. Though he strongly suspects she was like that even before this whole mess started.

Bella Swan. It had been quite an adjustment, suddenly sharing his last name and his life, but Charlie goes with the flow. When he had called his old friend Harry Clearwater to tell him about his transfer, he had hardly expected to get a call less than a week later, asking him how he felt about taking in an eighteen year old girl. But Charlie had always wanted a family, and so within forty-eight hours, he had himself a daughter. Though really, until she left for college, she was more of a roommate. Charlie doesn't mind being alone, he never has, and he's surprised that he actually misses having her around.

He was concerned at first. He knows he isn't the most fun guy to be around, and from what he'd heard, this girl needed some happiness in her life. He's a simple man--quiet, content to watch football on the television and take the occasional fishing trip with a friend or two. He doesn't know anything about teenage girls, except for the drunk high school students to whom he gives the occasional drinking ticket.

But Bella (and she would always be Bella to him: he neither wanted nor needed to know her original name) is proving to be an exceedingly easy adoptee. She's incredibly similar to Charlie—so similar, that he'd had a coworker inform him that he and his daughter were just alike. They get along well. She's an easy roommate. He really does nothing for her but provide her with a little extra protection, but she cooks for him when she's home and she takes care of the house. He has a home now, instead of the messy bachelor pad of a guy that spends too much time at work.

She's not what he expected, he muses, not for the first time. He'd expected a timid little thing afraid of her own shadow, full of anger and bitterness, or at the very least sadness. Instead, she is guilt and fire and worst of all, acceptance. He knows she feels guilty for what she brought on her family and because of what Charlie is risking for her. But she's determined to fight like hell to make sure that no one else is hurt. And at the end of the day, she takes what she's been dealt with no complaint, and Charlie won't undermine her bravery with his pity. He can name several people over twice her age that could learn from this tough little girl.

No, he won't pity her, but dammit, it just _is not fair_. So he tries his very best to be a family and not just a bodyguard, though he knows he will never fill the void that leaving her parents created. But if Charlie had a daughter, he would want a kid like Bella, so he tries. He gives her two guns that he's acquired over the years, and he teaches her how to shoot. They go to the shooting range, and she learns with a quiet but intense focus. He teaches her to fish, and she teaches him to make a few easy meals—his diet has improved remarkably since she entered his life. He calls her every few weeks and they chat about class and work. These conversations are awkward—neither one of them is a big talker—but they mean something to both of them. They are chasing the elusive ghost of family, and Charlie no longer hesitates before he uses the word "daughter." He knows she has a father that he can't replace, but it's easy to forget that she hasn't always been his. So when she calls to ask about her friend Jacob, Charlie is happy to drive up to meet the kid, because when has she ever asked for anything else?

Jasper Whitlock comes to his mind, and he frowns. He called Whitlock on the scheduled date to give his standard report, and everything seemed fine. And then Whitlock breaks protocol and shows up _at the house of the target_, no less, and he's furious, _especially_ after Whitlock tells him why exactly he came, though Charlie certainly understands why Whitlock felt the need to see for himself that Bella was alive and well. But when Bella saw Whitlock, the gloom that she'd been in for the entire ride back fell away and she just looked so _excited_ to see him that Charlie wondered if it wasn't almost cruel for him to show up at the house under the pretense that everything is fine.

But Bella's not an idiot, which often thwarts her own chances for happiness, and she knows that Whitlock won't risk showing up in her new home for no reason, and so she asks why. And then he has to deliver his _other_ news, and he knows the girl well enough to know that she'll take all the blame for this recent turn of events on her own shoulders. If she was morose when he picked her up from school, now, after hearing Jasper's news, she is _shattered_.

And Charlie is _furious_. He doesn't doubt that Whitlock's a good guy. He knows that his intentions are good. But to risk Bella's (and his own!) safety to deliver not the news that will renew her vigilance and put her on her guard against a dangerous enemy but instead the news that will do nothing but depress her, cause her unhappiness—Charlie seethes.

Of course it was a good move to warn her that Layton would be on the news in the next weeks. He could only imagine her reaction if she were watching the television with her friends and all of the sudden _his_ face was smeared across the screen. As if her past wasn't the stuff of nightmares already.

Charlie is a simple man. But it was much easier to be simple before Bella entered his life.

Somehow, he doesn't mind.

His daughter is worth it.

End Chapter


	21. Chapter 21

Dear Readers,

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and a thousand more apologies! It has been entirely too long since my last update, and thank you so much for not giving up on me. Thank you to everyone who reviewed or sent personal messages in the last few months—they've been a little rough. Between exams, theses, moving a thousand miles, starting a new job, a wedding (not mine, but in my immediate family), a major surgery (also not mine, but in my immediate family), and various other events, I haven't had too much free time. Also, I wrote almost all of this chapter, and then decided that I hated it. I then had to redo the entire thing, as it wasn't even in the right point of view. Hopefully, this much time won't pass between updates again. I didn't write everything that I wanted for this chapter because I wanted to get up. As a peace offering of sorts, a few things that have been hinted about will finally be explained—some of the bad news Jasper gives Charlie as well as what Alice asked Carlisle.

So, to review: Bella has run out of sleeping pills and his running herself ragged trying to fend off nightmares. She is now friends with the gang, mainly due to Emmett's machinations. Edward kissed Bella right before break, but she ran away without explaining herself. Alice had a mysterious conversation with Carlisle, and Charlie revealed that Jasper went to visit over Thanksgiving.

Disclaimer: I own my plot and nothing else.

Chapter Twenty-One: Bella

"Pull in here, please," I said listlessly.

Charlie looked at me in surprise. "This isn't your dorm."

"I know. It's Jake's."

Charlie held my gaze for a moment before shrugging. "Alright." He pulled into a parking spot and we sat for a long moment.

"Thanks for driving me."

"You're welcome." There was an awkward pause. "You sure you're alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine." There was another awkward moment as we were unsure how to say good-bye. We were never physically demonstrative with each other. "Alright, then," I said, jumping out of the car and grabbing my bag. "I'll see you at Christmas." I was glad when he didn't try to forestall my exit with words of comfort or platitudes.

I ran to the entrance of the dorm so I could slip in behind a chatty girl instead of having to be buzzed in and wearily trudged up the five staircases to Jake's floor, glad I had packed for the vacation in my backpack instead of a suitcase. I rapped on his door and heard him yell "Come in!"

I opened the door and walked inside, closing it behind me. It took me a moment to focus through my bleary eyes. Jake was laying on his bed, one hand behind his head and the other turning a page in his textbook. He looked over at the doorway.

"Bella!" he said in surprise, making as if to get off his bed. "Come on in!"

"No, don't move," I said. I kicked off my shoes and climbed up on the bed beside him, careful of my stiff muscles and bruised body. Jasper and I had sparred several times over the last few days. I gingerly reclined between him and the wall, gazing up at him. He looked at me with concern. "I practiced a lot over break. I'm sore," I explained. The concern didn't leave his face. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that he saw through me with ease.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked uncertainly.

"No. I just want you to talk to me. About anything. Distract me, please."

He looked at me with an arrested expression for a few seconds before falling back on his pillows. Good ole Jake. "Well, I think I'm going to drop my engineering major."

Huh. I propped up on my elbows. "How come?"

"Because I hate it."

I giggled. Holy crow, if that wasn't a sign of exhaustion I don't know what was. "Tell me how you really feel."

He laughed. "Well, I was thinking over break that what I really want to do is open a garage. Do all your basic stuff, but also maybe some restorations. And the fact is, I know cars. I've been taking cars apart and putting them back together since I was eight, so an engineering major isn't going to help me with that. What I need is help with the business, money making part of it. I'm already working on accounting, so I figured I would add marketing."

I considered that for a while. "Makes sense."

"I thought so."

I looked over at his roommate's half of the room. Quil, in what I had learned was very typical behavior, had decorated his half of the room with large posters of scantily clad women and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar. Quil and Jake had met through their scholarship program for Native American students and had decided to room together. They got along swimmingly. "Where's Quil?" I asked.

Jake gave me a _you should know better_ look. "With a girl."

"Same one?" The weekend before, Quil had been on a date with a short, curly-haired girl named Jessica.

"Course not. He met this one in the airport on the way home."

I shook my head in disbelief. The boy had no tact, no sensitivity, and yet he found more women than he knew what to do with. "How was your holiday?" Jake's voice interrupted my thoughts.

I slumped back down and buried my head in his comforter. "It sucked," I mumbled into his bed.

"What was that?" he asked, poking me in the head.

I lifted up my head. "My parents got a divorce." I dropped back onto the bed for a split second before Jake snapped his book shut, lifted me up and turned me so I was resting with my back to his check between his legs. I snuggled in and sniffled. He pulled me in closer and held me tightly, careful of my abused body. It was a good day for me when I punched Jake in the stomach and he decided I would be fun to have around, I decided for the hundredth time.

"So what happened," he asked quietly.

I shrugged. "Who knows," I said bitterly. "The officer on my case told me. Maybe your daughter being stalked for a couple months by a lunatic who lights your wife on fire before said daughter disappears into some bush league version of witness protection puts some strain on a marriage. My dad apparently moved out a month ago."

"I'm sorry, Bella," he said gently. I was glad he knew me well enough not to offer any sort of "It's not your fault" condolences. While I know he honestly believed them, and wasn't just saying them, nothing would assuage the guilt. Platitudes just forced my grief and guilt into sharp relief.

"Yeah, thanks," I acknowledged, laughing bitterly.

"Well…" he said awkwardly, casting around for a topic. He swung his knees from side to side, forcing me to move with them. I giggled despite myself. "So," he said lightly, "what's going on with you and ginger?"

I rolled my eyes. "Nothing."

He didn't say a word, but his skepticism shouted in the silence.

"Oh, fine," I muttered. He chuckled loudly, my back vibrating where it lay flush with his chest. "He kissed me."

"Ah," Jake exhaled. He didn't say anything for a long moment, but when I turned to look at him, he had a bright smile on his face. "So," he said, gesturing to our intimately entwined bodies, "should I be expecting an ass-kicking if for some reason he walked in my room right now?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

"I don't really know," I confessed. "I fled the scene of the crime immediately."

"What?!" Jake exclaimed before looking at me for a long moment and collapsing back with laughter. "Oh, that's rich. He kissed you and you ran away? Typical Bella. Priceless."

"It's not funny," I disagreed hotly, feeling blood rush into my cheeks, whether in embarrassment or anger I couldn't tell. I swiftly took back my earlier gratitude for Jake's presence in my life and wished instead that I'd hit him harder.

"Untrue," he said, still shaking from suppressed laughter. "So did he chase you? Calling your name maybe? 'Oh, Bella, my love, do not forsake me so!'" His laughter slowly died away as he observed my frown, his chest still twitching convulsively.

"Are you done?" I asked pointedly. He nodded. "Good. So now you want to tell me what I should do?" I watched mystified as his face took on a peculiar, pained expression.

"Well," he said. He seemed to force the word out. "What do you want to do? Do you like him?" He shook his head, and I breathed a silent sigh of relief as his smile returned to his face and he looked like my Jake again. "God, I feel like a middle school girl."

I giggled again. "I wouldn't know. I was never that girl."

"Boxing Bella? Yeah, I wouldn't imagine you would have been."

"No," I corrected. "I only became Boxing Bella in this past year. Nerdy Reading Bella. I was never really the slumber party type."

"I can see that," he agreed. A lecherous smile spread over his face. "So, I've been meaning to ask you, I have all these sexy librarian fantasies…"

"Jake!" I squealed, smacking his shoulder and immediately wincing and rubbing my hand.

"Bells…" he said with an air of affected patience. "You know how to box, and you use a girly slap like that?"

"Shut up. And lay off the steroids," I retorted.

"Hey!" he cried. "This is all natural, thank you very much." I rolled my eyes in response and leaned back against his chest again. He rubbed his large hands up and down my arms gently. "So…" he prodded.

"I don't know," I sighed. "Well, that's not true. I do know, I do like him. But it's complicated. Really complicated."

"Bella, it's only complicated if you make it complicated," he chided.

"Yeah," I responded sourly. "Even on that front."

"What?" he said. He pushed me up to an upright opinion and sat up from his pillows, pulling his legs in (I grinned irrationally) Indian style.

"Well," I began. "Let's talk shallow. Edward is Alice's roommate. Alice is one of my best friends. So if we're talking stupid girly stuff, that's big. You don't date your roommate's older brother, and you don' date your best friend's older brother."

"Bella," Jake interjected. I cut him off.

"Added to that, Edward has no idea who I am. He thinks I'm a safe haven baby, for crying out loud."

"What?" Jake asked again, startled. He had never heard this part. I smiled, a horrible, twisted sort of smile.

"Yeah, it's the cover story that was given to me. I was dropped off at the police station when I was eight, and Charlie adopted me. It explains a lot, you see." Jake opened his mouth as if he was going to say something, but I cut him off again. "And added to the fact that he doesn't know anything about me, I know I'm safe now—" I broke off, remembering Jasper's extreme reaction when I asked if I could tell a couple friends the truth about me. "Well," I continued, "allegedly anyway"— Jake frowned—"if James were to track me here, he would kill Edward in a heartbeat, _and_"—my voice rose—"It seems a little selfish to be thinking about my stupid, teenage love life when my parents just divorced!" I finished in a holler. I angrily wiped tears away.

"Bella," Jake said, pulling me onto his lap. I tucked my head into the space where his shoulder met his neck. He rocked me for a few seconds before tugging on my hair until I looked at him. "Look, you do what feels right to you, okay? And for the record, your excuse about Alice is bullshit, you know she wants you to bang her brother"—he ignored me when I planted my elbow firmly in his ribs—"which don't get me wrong, is creepy as fuck, but whatever. And you _are_ safe, and so is Edward, and I highly doubt that your mom would want you to put your life on hold when you've just started living again. So," he shook me gently, "stop making shit up. If you like him, go for it. If not…" His voice trailed off and he grinned irrepressibly. "Well, I suggest you tell him, but I'm sure if you run every time he kisses you, he'll get the picture soon enough." I chuckled thickly through my tears. Jake disentangled his legs from underneath me, and we resumed our earlier position again. "So," he said gently, "you okay?"

"Just keep talking, please," I asked weakly, eyes watering.

So he did. I lay there in his arms while he talked about anything and everything. He told me about growing up with a dad in a wheelchair and he talked about his oldest sister eloping with a surfer. He told me legends from his tribe, fantastic stories with vampires and spirit warriors and werewolves, and he talked about his classes. I was slowly being lulled to sleep by the sound of his voice when the door banged open.

"Jake, I am THE man!" Quil announced, slamming the door behind him. "There is NO ONE out there with these looks, these skills--oh, hello, Bella." The look on his face was comical.

"Hey, Quil." I shook off the fog of impending sleep and sat up. "Why are you the man?"

"Uh…" He looked at Jake and then back at me. "No offense, Bells, it's, ah, not really a story meant for such delicate ears…"

"Say no more," I interrupted, swinging my legs off the bed and jumping down. "I've gotta get back to my dorm anyway." I grabbed my bag and turned back to Jake, who frowned down at me from his bed.

"You sure, Bells?" he asked softly.

"Yeah," I said softly. "I'm sure." I leaned in and kissed his cheek. "Thanks, Jake." As the door shut behind me I heard Quil's voice.

"Thanks, Jake? _Thanks,_ Jake? Jake, my man, congratulations, you finally tap that a—OUCH!" I laughed quietly as I left the building, swiping at my eyes. Once I had started crying, my eyes continued to leak long after I stopped—a telling indication of how exhausted I was.

I started on the walk back to my dorm in a sort of meditative silence, broken only when I tripped, which was unfortunately more often than normal as I hadn't slept in weeks. My walk slowed down to an dawdling pace, as I thought about the confrontation ahead and winced. I had been horribly rude to Alice the last time we'd spoken. And while that wouldn't have bothered me too much my first month here, it bothered me now. But I still had no idea what to say to her. She went home for Thanksgiving, I knew, and I had no clue what her brother might have told her about our last meeting.

Edward.

When Emmett asked me to please bring Edward his wallet in the music building's practice rooms, I didn't notice that it didn't make sense for Edward to go grocery shopping on his way home the day before he left town. Or maybe I did, and I just ignored it because I wanted to see him one more time before we both left. The same way I ignored the way that Emmett smiled a bit too brightly when he handed me the wallet in question.

Of course, it was a little too subtle to be Emmett's idea. No, this had Alice Cullen written all over it. Jake was completely right about her, and I had been ignoring her hints about her brother and me for a while now.

When I opened the door to our room, Alice was sitting on her bed, legs swinging nervously. She hopped down and opened her mouth to say something, but stopped when I raised my hand.

"Look, Alice," I said quietly. "I'm really sorry about how I acted the other d—" I staggered back as five feet of pure, unadulterated energy flew into my arms.

"Oh, Bella, don't be ridiculous." She stepped back and eyed me speculatively. I knew that she was taking in my beaten converse shoes, my frayed jeans and baggy sweatshirt, and the deep circles under my eyes. "You haven't slept at all, have you?" she asked, voice soft with concern. I shook my head mutely.

"Nope," I said, voice thickly with exhaustion. I slumped tiredly in my desk chair. Bewilderedly, I watched Alice fumble with her make up bag awkwardly, pulling out a small piece of paper and opening and closing her mouth several times without speaking. Alice never fumbled, and she was never awkward or at a loss for words. Who was this girl in front of me?

"Bella," she said cautiously. "I don't want you to be mad at me, because I really wasn't trying to interfere, but…" her voice trailed off.

I propped my head up in my hand, looking at her with interest. "But…"

"Well, you know my dad's a doctor?" she asked timidly. I nodded, completely mystified.

"Well," she continued haltingly, "he doesn't normally do this sort of thing, because, well, it's not exactly ethical, but we talked for a long time, and I persuaded him." Her mouth formed a half smile. "I can be pretty convincing."

I snorted. "No shit."

She smiled apprehensively. "Anyway, eventually he agreed, and he gave this to me to give to you." She thrust a small piece of paper in my hand. I looked down, reading and recognizing immediately what was written on it. I looked back up at her with wide eyes.

"It's only for a couple months, he wants to talk to you before he gives you anymore, and he says you should really try to see if you can't talk to someone or wean yourself off" she said hurriedly, "and it may not be what you usually use, but since you use them every night for extended periods of time, he insisted on giving you a kind that's non habit-forming and"—she shut up, cut off by my tight embrace.

"Thank you," I choked out. "You have no idea…just…thank you."

"So you aren't mad?" she asked anxiously.

"Mad?" I laughed disbelievingly, releasing her from my hold. "Alice, I don't even know how to _begin_ to thank you for this."

"Well," she said, her eyes shining, "you can let me drive you to a pharmacy, and maybe get some sleep tonight? And you could possibly start working somewhat reasonable hours that don't make me want to kill myself when I even think about it?"

I laughed jubilantly and followed her out the door.

That night, I slept a full twelve hours without one nightmare and was able to concentrate in class the next day for the first time in weeks.

I thanked Alice profusely the next morning, but she wouldn't hear any of it.

"I'm just glad I didn't have to resort to Mike Newton," she said mischievously. "I really didn't want him hanging around the room all the time."

And whatever last-ditch efforts I had been making to hold Alice at her friendship at bay, I dropped immediately. If she asked me to go with her to a party, I would. If she wanted me to tag along on a shopping trip, I did that as well.

And when she asked me to please talk to her brother because he was a nervous wreck, I agreed.

End Chapter

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